Fotografia Europea Reggio Emilia

A third edition of Fotografia Europea has just open in the town of Reggio Emilia with exhibition until 8 of June. Curated by Elio Grazioli for the second year running it is one of the most important event for photography in Italy. During the first week Fotografia Europea is packed with meeting, events, talks and performances around the theme of "Human, Too Human" intended as bodies and their representation in photography and contemporary visual arts. As most contemporary festival is divided in the official and off section with a large number of works on display, impossible to see all in one day so be prepared for long walks.
Edward Steichen is surely one of those exhibition that can`t be missed, divided in two different sites "Un Epopea Fotografica" at Palazzo Magnani an exhibition of the entire career of the artist and a second exhibition at Chiostri di San Domenico with works from 1923- 1927 during the years at Conde` Nast. In the same building you could see "Heroines"by Bettina Rheims, a series of large sculptural portrait depicting actresses and models in couture and nude.

A series of colour polaroid by Paolo Gioli is on display at Palazzo Casotti, just behind the main square, with images of torsos, busts, anatomy. A research into the use of polaroid from an artist that has creatively explored this medium in his work.
Together with Paolo Gioli this section includes Raoul Hausmann, Jorge Molder, Pierre et Gilles and Wols that you could visit accross Reggio Emilia.
Bruno Cattani works are on display at Musei Civici exhibiting black and white photographs of sculptures from various museum. The artist says that his work " wasn’t carried out by following academic clichés, but with an aesthetic choice in which figures communicate and exchange looks of complicity, repeating the gestures that are part of their history". This photographic research project on the theme "Human, Too Human" together with projects by the italian artist Jarno Zaffelli and Patrizio Esposito are on diaplay at the same museum together with stuffed animals, old paintings and antiques. Works by Elio Mazzacane Vanni Codeluppi, Fabio Donato and Benedetta Alfieri, enhances and completes the exhibitions on offer at Fotografia Europea 2008.

On the international front, Aneta Grzeszykowska at Palazzo Torello-Malaspina and Ann-Sofi Sidén at Spazio Gerra are showing visual performance of the body. Performatives experience that in the case of Ann-Sofi Sidén involved filming over 200 persons in Reggio Emilia sliding down a fire station emergency pole. Other international artist includes Antoine D’Agata from France and Erwin Olaf from Holland.

Human, Too Human could is as a visual retrospective into the body, that the curator describes as a "body of photographic images, a body that has developed and changed over the years as much as the human body, incorporating new materials, new techniques and new devices, right up to the apparent immateriality of digital technologies" .