New beginnings from images. Investigations into reality and the inner gaze
Milan, 14th September – 31st October 2022
The 17th edition of Photofestival, Milan’s great art photography festival, will be held from 14 September to 31 October 2022.
In this moment of transition, the festival invites us to reflect on the importance of images to observe reality- and ourselves- with different eyes, recovering a normality that has never felt so appreciated.
Milan, 4th February 2022 – The seventeenth edition of Milano Photofestival, the annual exhibition of fine art photography promoted by AIF – Associazione Italiana Foto & Digital Imaging, will take place from 14 September to 31 October 2022. For the third consecutive year, the schedule is fixed for autumn, instead of the historical spring period, due to the uncertainty linked to the diffusion of Covid.
The intention is, once again, to stage. together with all the protagonists of the world of photography, an assortment of exhibitions and initiatives to be experienced in person, as well as virtually, confirming the centrality of an event that has long been a fundamental reference point for national photography.
The widespread festival will involve art galleries, museums, shops, public and private exhibition spaces both in the Milan metropolitan area and in some neighbouring Lombardy provinces, with the aim of expanding to other regions.
The theme chosen by the organising committee for Photofestival 2022 is “New beginnings from images. Investigations into reality and the inner gaze“. The complexity of the times we are living in has required each of us to change our behaviour and the way we operate, and never before has photography played such a fundamental role in our lives, helping us to explore the complex reality that surrounds us.
“We are coming out of a situation of general dismay, where for a while we lost our usual points of reference and found it hard to find them again, whilst repeating to ourselves, even without really believing it, that only beauty could save the world” – comments Roberto Mutti, artistic director of Photofestival. “After so much, too much, rhetoric (remember the “we will come out of this stronger”?) it is true that, as soon as the sky began to clear up a little, photographers – who in many cases had limited themselves to framing metaphysical urban landscapes desolately devoid of life – began to produce projects capable of projecting them and us into a new dimension of which we had perhaps forgotten the importance: that of the creative will that gives meaning to life. In other words, normality. So, a new beginning starting from images to be produced, analysed, exhibited and appreciated is a beautiful goal that we at Photofestival share and, obviously, promote. The signals coming from the world of photography are encouraging and reveal two major trends that are equally interesting. On the one hand, there is a desire to observe reality with different eyes, as if, having emerged from the dark, we had to get used to light again to rediscover what we had not sufficiently appreciated before. On the other, there is the need to take a look inside ourselves, not to lose ourselves in an intimist subjectivism, but to recover a deep reflection on being photographers and on the consequent need to interpret the world around us”.
As always, he festival programme will include, alongside the exhibitions, a series of associated initiatives such as workshops, screenings, portfolio readings and meetings with the authors.
Also confirmed is the third edition of the “Le immagini rilegate” Award for the best photographic book of the year, organised to compare the different types of editorial products that publishers and authors can offer public. The Terms and Conditions of the competition will be available on the event website.
Photofestival 17th
Milan
14th September – 31st October 2022
Various locations
Info: segreteria@milanophotofestival.it
Press Office
Up2C PR & Communication Agency
Cristina Comelli | mob. +39 348 5150210 | press@milanophotofestival.it
