140 exhibitions in more than two months: the 2020 edition of Photofestival kicks off

Kicking off on Sept. 7 is the 15th edition of Photofestival, Milan’s most important art photography festival, which will end on Nov. 15: more than two months of programming with 140 photographic exhibitions and a schedule spread across the entire Metropolitan City of Milan and the Lombard provinces of Lecco, Monza, Pavia and Varese.

Scenarios, Horizons, Challenges. The changing world is the title chosen for the 2020 edition, and the program will range between solo and group exhibitions by internationally renowned authors, professional photographers and emerging talents, and between a rich variety of genres, from portraiture to still-life, from sports to nature, from research to travel photography.

The festival’s exhibition venues will be art galleries, museums, libraries and municipal venues, as well as stores and showrooms, to expand the number of visitors. Fulcrum is confirmed again this year as Palazzo Castiglioni, headquarters of Confcommercio Milano, an artistic manifesto ofArt Nouveau, named the “Palace of Photography” of Photofestival.

Of note are two important group exhibitions:

Sguardi a fior di Pelle, Oct. 5-25 at the Cultural Center of Milan, held in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Giuliani, brings together a panorama of important Italian and international authors who have measured themselves from the second half of the 19th century to the present with the most diverse photographic genres, telling in parallel the capacity of each production system to transform. Among the authors on display are Giorgio Sommer, Luigi Chierichetti, Josef Sudek, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Roberto Polillo, Mario Giacomelli, Luigi Ghirri, Franco Fontana, and Nino Migliori.

The Rigor of the Gaze, from Oct. 1 to 15 at Palazzo Castiglioni, fresh from an exhibition in Paris, brings together works from the 3M Foundation’s archive made in different eras by famous authors (Gabriele Basilico, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Ferruccio Leiss, Gianni Borghesan, Piergiorgio Branzi, Franco Fontana, Federico Vender, Elio Luxardo) and younger ones.

The program of this edition will also feature 41 solo exhibitions of female photographers, 21 group exhibitions involving about 70 female authors and 18 curators.

Alongside the exhibitions, there is also a program of events and engagement activities with meetings, presentations, portfolio readings and workshops designed for the younger generation, as well as for photography enthusiasts.

Among the new features is a map of Photofestival venues for easy orientation around the city in search of exhibitions. The guide can be found in the catalog, divided by area, and is available in an online version from milanophotofestival.it. And the The Bound Images Award for the best photography book of the year, which Photofestival decided to create to compare the different realities of this publishing product. The winner will be proclaimed by a jury at the opening of the dedicated exhibition.

“Crossing the milestone of fifteen editions,” said Roberto Mutti, artistic director of Photofestival, “is undoubtedly for us a source of pride but also an occasion for some important considerations. Because, if this result is the fruit of the much work that our group has done with great determination, it is also true that we have done it on the push of the sponsors who have supported us, of the advertisers and companies not only in photography that have been close to us, of the associations that have helped us, of the galleries, of the many different operators, of the photographers and photographers who have made us feel their desire to be with us. And all this, in a very difficult year like this one, has a special significance because it confirms the correctness of our cultural policy that has always been inclusive and careful to propose quality projects even in the peripheral areas, and patience if some, few indeed, reserve for us an aristocratic detachment. To these we respond not only with the strength of numbers, because 140 exhibitions are still an important result, but also with the expansion of our project to cities like Monza and Lecco and Pavia. Despite everything that has happened in this tragic 2020, we have reaffirmed our fixed points such as the proposal of the printed catalog this time enriched by city maps to better plan visits, the idea of including at each edition something new (this year the prize to the best photographic book), the richness of a program that also includes meetings, workshops, portfolio readings and, last but not least, the willingness to welcome new talents to work alongside the already established authors.”

Promoted and organized by AIF - Associazione Italiana Foto & Digital Imaging, Photofestival is realized in collaboration with Confcommercio Milano and is sponsored by the City of Milan and the Lombardy Region. The 2020 edition of the festival, supported by individual AIF member companies, has the support of Fondazione Cariplo and Sponsors Giuliani and Gruppo Cimbali.

For info: milanophotofestival.it

©️Occhiomagico, 1994

140 exhibitions in more than two months: the 2020 edition of Photofestival kicks off

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