(By Shelley Kittleson)
This year's Rome
International Photography Festival focuses on portraits and the
relations between individuals, the community and time.
"What really counts in portraiture is the relation created
between the photographer and the person being photographed,"
said Marco Delogu, the artistic director of the festival. "The
work is the representation of this idealized link. This is the
difference between the photos in which a subject poses and ones
in which an attempt is made to represent the individual by
catching them unawares."
The festival centers around an exhibition at Marco (Via
Nizza 138) and a collective comprising selected photographers,
curators, critics and museum directors of an international
level.
The works include Roger Ballen's 'Asylum of the Birds', a
series of dreamlike images against the backdrop of the
Johannesburg outskirts. In Ballen's work, the subject of the
portrait is taken apart both conceptually - with highly
metaphorical elements - and physically: surreal compositions
mixing magical objects with signs, unease, visions and flocks of
birds.
American photographer Larry Fink's portraits are of the
'underground' artists he lived with when he was 17, in 1957 at
the Sullivan Street Theatre, and express the epoch and a sense
of youth.
The festival includes mug shots of men and women from the
late 19th century charged with anarchism from the state
archives, as well as the first personal exhibition in Italy of
Asger Carlsen, a Rome imbued with light by Marco Delogu, and
portraiture from the Trevisan collection.
Many exhibitions linked to the main one are being held this
year in foreign academies, institutional spaces and private
galleries, such as a retrospective on August Sander and Helmar
Lerski by the German Academy.
Over the first weekend, 'Anna Gianesini- Fotografia
Lectures' is being held, in which the main photographers comment
on their works. In late October, some of the photos will be
exhibited in cultural centers and theaters in the outskirts of
Rome.
"The theme of portraiture and identity has a special
significance for the outskirts," said Giovanna Marinelli, Rome
culture councillor. "The festival aims to expand outwards and
offer an experience not only in Macro".
From November 14 to November 16, the works of Ballen,
Fink, Delogu and Antonia Mulas will be exhibited in Milan's
Frigoriferi Milanesi.
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