Inauguration of the «Light of the mountain» exhibition, Santa Giulia Museum – Photo New Reporter Comincini © www.giornaledibrescia.it
Il Brescia Photo Festival 2023 (in its sixth edition) has officially inaugurated. After the two previews of the last few weeks (“Things never seen” by Gianni Berengo Gardin at the Ma.Co.fe «Nomad in a beautiful land» by David Lachapelle for Giacomo Ceruti in Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo), the Brescian festival dedicated to photography has opened the first exhibitions. According to the artistic director Renato Corsini, they can become an antidote to artificial intelligence (if not to combat it, then to slow down its expansion a little): «Photography will soon be confronted with this new form. In spite of what we exhibit and in defiance of archives, AI invents everything, even photographs. We are not dealing with retouching of reality, but with a photograph that no longer has any truth to it. I hope that this Festival will become an invitation not to give in so easily, remaining somewhat analogical».
Analogous is also the theme of the edition, «Capital», which Fondazione Brescia Musei, Ma.Co.f, Skira and all the protagonists involved have declined above all by following one of the themes of Bergamo and Brescia Capital of Culturethat is to say «City as nature». The naturalistic heights are the subject of the exhibition inaugurated at the Museum of Santa Giulia, “Light of the mountain”which will be visible until June 25th (info and tickets on bresciamusei.com), while the most labile, suffering and terrifying nature is at the center of the«Fragile nature» exhibition in the spaces of the Ma.Co.f in via Moretto (visible to the public from 25 March to 18 June with an entrance fee of 5 euros which includes all current exhibitions).
Mountain light
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THE BIG 4 OF PHOTOGRAPHY
«Light of the mountain» collects four personal which, following the slopes of mountains all over the world, show the different eras of photographic art. Starting from the end of the nineteenth century with the shots of Victor Sella – expert mountaineer heir of the author of the first photographic manual in Italy and of the founder of the Cai – we arrive at the photos of the German Axel Huette, which also accepted the invitation from the Brescia Musei Foundation to take pictures of the surrounding mountains (such as Adamello and Presanella). In the middle Martin Chambia Peruvian photographer from the turn of the century who, in addition to the mountains, turns his lens to the ethnographic richness of his land, and Ansel Adams, who with thirty photographs here reaffirms his artistic and technical greatness. There are a total of 120 images on display, distributed in the corridors right next to the exhibition dedicated to Giacomo Ceruti, «Miseria&Nobiltà».
Fragile nature
Al Ma.Co.f, instead, the fragility of nature is interpreted through the reportage shots of some Italian photojournalists. Among them, Giorgio Palmas documents the Polesine flood of 1951, Giorgio Lotti the disasters of the Arno in Florence in 1966, Aldo Durazzi and Renato Corsini the Belice earthquake in 1968 and Friuli in 1976 and, finally, Giorgio Salomon the tempest Vaia of 2018. It all ends with a provocative installation by Mirko Zoccarato.