Have you ever talked to a work of art?

Like the Fondazione Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia (Italy) that while waiting to reopen its exhibition spaces and welcome the public in complete safety, continues to invent new activities, which use unexpected media with a fresh and direct language. In fact, it proposes a new calendar of appointments – digital, at a distance, but with an active and analogical involvement – to tell the exhibition True Fictions, Fotografia visionaria dagli anni ‘70 ad oggi (Visionary photography from the 70s to today) which was extended until March 28, 2021.

After the success of the first edition, Opere al Telefono, the free project inspired by Telephone Tales by Gianni Rodari, is back with a new catalog of photographs selected from those on display and gives visitors the opportunity to ‘enter in the opera’. By calling +39 0522/444446 you can chat with one of the Foundation's experts who responds to doubts and curiosities about the chosen work.

But that is not all. Palazzo Magnani also offers new ways of learning based on interaction, personal interaction, with physical references. From 23 January, every Saturday, with the virtual visits, you can in fact ‘walk’ among the more than 100 works that make up the exhibition, guided by the staff of the Foundation. In addition, from January 28, for two Thursdays a month, the Face to Face initiative allows you to live a special experience, face to face with a work of art. Each visitor becomes an active part of the visit: he has the opportunity to take time for himself, enter – really – in relation to the chosen photographic work and discover it from his own point of view.

All the proposed initiatives are specifically designed to make people known, waiting to do it in attendance, the exhibition Visionary photography from the 70s to today, dedicated to the phenomenon of staged photography. A trend that, starting from the Eighties, has profoundly innovated the stylistic language, enhancing the narrative and illusionistic qualities of photography.

Produced by Fotografia Europea, the exhibition presents the most imaginative side of photography through the inventions of some of the greatest authors of the last thirty years and the experiments born from the advent of digital technology.

“Staged photography has radically changed our approach to photography: from a medium intended primarily to document reality, it has become the privileged medium for inventing parallel realities, credible lies, fantastic worlds” explain Walter Guadagnini, curator of the exhibition. “It was a revelation and a revolution in the 1980s –from which some of the absolute protagonists of art and photography emerged as Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, Joan Fontcuberta –it became a genre in the 2000s, when Photoshop and digital processing transformed the nature of photography. However, there have been few exhibitions in the world, and none in Italy, so they tried to critically define such a vast field. This exhibition, therefore, collects extraordinarily fascinating, disturbing and amusing works, which talk about us pretending to talk about something else, and it is also an opportunity to study to frame this phenomenon historically”.

With the desire to expand the space dedicated to young talents and at the same time deepen the theme of fantastic narration, the exhibition Atlanti, ritratti e altre storie – 6 giovani fotografi europei has also been extended until 28 March 2021. The collective exposes the personal of the three winners of the open call launched by Fotografia Europea 2020 and three projects selected by the jury.