ITALY CENTRAL FOCUS AT FRANCE'S PHOTOMED FESTIVAL
By Aurora Bergamini
07 marzo, 19:40
(ANSA) - Rome, March 7 - Contemporary Italian photography
takes center stage at the fourth edition of the Photomed
festival, to be held from May 22 to June 15 in the coastal town
of Sanary-sur-Mer, the island of Bandol and the city of
Toulouse, in the south of France.
The guest of honor this year is 80-year-old Mimmo Jodice,
an internationally renowned photographer who hails from Naples
and who has in the past collaborated with art stars such as Andy
Warhol and Michelangelo Pistoletto."Jodice is an extraordinary photographer, and extremely representative of classical Italian photography", co-curator Simon Edwards told ANSA.
The aim of the festival, he said, is to bring together photographic talents from around the Mediterranean Basin, and to promote cultural links between them. This year, there are 21 photographers on show.
"The Jodice retrospective at the Hotel des Arts in Toulouse will span six decades, including his images of ancient sculptures and seascapes, which explore his relationship with time and space as well as the origins of the Mediterranean world. Jodice's landscapes and seascapes are a bridge between antiquity and a timeless, seemingly eternal present", Edwards said.
"Italy is a very important country in the history of Mediterranean photography. Last year we also paid tribute to Gabriele Basilico. "It's about time Italy also had its own great center or museum of Italian photography", he added.
Other Italian photographers at this year's Photomed include Stefano De Luigi with an exhibition titled 'iDyssey', which premiered last year in Milan and which retraces the Odyssey with an iPhone, and Paolo Verzone, who explores the issue of European identity by documenting the daily lives of military cadets around the Mediterranean. The Dreams and Visions section features work by Silvia Camporesi, Simona Ghizzoni and Beatrice Pediconi, offering their interpretation of life both real and imaginary, while the Scenes from Daily Life category includes pictures of Italy's city squares by Massimo Siragusa and portraits of people at the beach by Fabrizio Bellomo.
The festival also includes nocturnal landscapes by Barbara Luisi (Dreamland), marine horizons and border areas between islands and continents by Sandra Rocha (Waterline), and the martyrs of Tahrir Square by Denis Dailleux. There are also portraits of Moroccans by Leila Alaoui, a reportage on single mothers in Algeria by Arslane Bestaoui, the Baroque churches of Croatia and Slovenia by Keiichi Tahara, and the Roman experience of Francois Delebeque.
Other photographers on show: Bastien Defives, Serge Najjar, Bernard Plossu, Jean-Francois Rauzier, and Patrick Tourneboeuf.
