The Ragusa Photo Festivalwhich is in its 12th edition, continues to offer interesting photographs with fifteen exhibitions by authors such as Ferdinando Scianna or Antonio Biasiucci, who, with Mimmo Paladino, reinterpret the ancient game of the raffle, and various projects, including this created by Mario Cresci during his artistic residency in the Sicilian city, which gave rise to the exhibition Limen, threshold of passage. The international event is also dedicated to the promotion of young talents and focuses on the different languages of contemporary photography.
An opportunity not to be missed to discover this land of deep charm and discover qualified authors and interesting photographic productions. The 2024 edition of the Ragusa Foto Festival, under the direction of Stefania Paxhia, creator and founder of the event, and artistic director Massimo Siragusa, sees creativity and production flourish even if this year’s slogan is Take a break (Pause).
A constructive break, as Paxhia explains: “A way of slowing down the speed and tension that characterize modernity, in a constant search for time that flees and escapes us. Being able to take a break doesn’t mean staying still. On the contrary, it can be the moment that gives value to everything else.
After all, “Ogni pausa è cielo in cui mi perdo” (“Every break is a paradise in which I lose myself”), wrote Salvatore Quasimodo, Nobel Prize winner for literature.
“Sicily is also the protagonist of the works exhibited, demonstrating the vitality and innovation of contemporary photographic production, open to dialogue beyond artistic and geographical borders,” says Stefania Paxhia.
The highlights of the festival are the exhibitions at Palazzo Cosentini, Palazzo La Rocca, the deconsecrated church of San Vincenzo Ferreri and the Jardin Ibleo.
In addition, from September 29 to October 29, the works of the four winners of the “Young Photographers of the Italian Academies” competition, YPIA #4, will be exhibited.
Limen, threshold of passage
As already mentioned, among the exhibitions of the Ragusa Foto Festival there is Limen, threshold of passage (Limen, seuil de passage), whose title is evocative. It is intriguing to discover the creative work that Cresci carried out during the Artist Residency (a new feature in this edition) offered by the Festival.
The images take us into a hybrid reality, made of paper, maps and imagination: an artistic project based on its interaction with the territory and maps of Sicily collected in the “Cesare e Doris Zipelli” collection of Banca Agricola Popolare di Ragusa, which attest to the geopolitical interpretation of the island between the 16th and 19th centuries as well as the complexity of the cultural heritage.
L’exposition au Palazzo Garofalo, Limen, threshold of passagefascinates and explains. And this also reflects the motivations for photography that Mario Cresci tells us about.
“Photography is kind of a part of my life,” he says. “I don’t have any training in photography, I took the higher industrial design course in Venice. Italo Zannier used to give a photography class there: that’s when I decided not to be a designer, but rather to use photography for design purposes.
It was in 1964 that American Pop Art arrived at the Venice Biennale, radically changing the parameters of art through the works of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. And I wondered why photographers locked themselves in the darkroom, while these artists opened the darkroom and opened up to the world.”
How has all of this impacted your approach to photography?
“My way of photographing is anchored in multidisciplinary studies and experiences, blending the study of photographic language with contemporary art. I confront images of artistic heritage, a source of infinite suggestions, containing photography, drawing, painting, video and installation. Knowledge of the Arte Povera group was also relevant.”
Over the years, Cresci has developed different themes and ways of experimenting: “My work is an expression between photography, graphics, teaching, multimedia and communication. There is a kind of ambiguity that was expressed, for example, in 1969, at the Galleria Il Diaframma (directed by Lanfranco Colombo) in Milan, where I conceived the photograph ” Environment “ with a thousand photographs inside as many transparent cylinders,” he declares.
All this is concentrated in the works of art that Mario Cresci created in Ragusa. A challenge between the discovery of the territory and the maps (which are a representation of the territory). “Gulf of potential multiplicity”, as Calvino says in American lessonsfor Cresci photography is never an end in itself, but it is always part of a story in images which can combine knowledge, field research and visual emotion.
“This cartographic collection is a testimony to the geopolitical importance of Sicily over the centuries, an expression of the attention of foreign travelers and the work of European cartographers of the time. During this mission in the Ragusa region, I got to know the depth of the territory and the value of cartography, which evolves over the centuries, like the island itself, which is formed and transformed. This is the landscape described by great writers,” adds Cresci.
In fact, in the collage series this extended duration is expressed in the continuous visual transition between ancient maps of Sicily, navigation books and contemporary landscapes, while the images of the luminous territory of Ragusa represent a direct experience of this trip. In the constant search for the “home of a thought”.
Paola Sammartano
All the exhibitions of the Festival
Ferdinando Scianna – Sleeping, perhaps dreaming
Antonio Biasiucci and Mimmo Paladino – tombola
Mario Cresci – Limen, threshold of passageArtist residency for the Zipelli Foundation
Simona Ghizzoni – Isola
Luca Campigotto – Waterviews
Angelo Raffaele Turetta – Chronicles from Fiction
Noble Loredana – Sicily
Marco Zanta – This is the way it is
Viola Pantano – Anemos
Umberto Coa – Stadiums in Sicily
Iblean Memory – edited by Alfredo Corrao
Best Portfolio 2023 (Alessandro Cristofoletti – ‘United by what separates’; Ciro Battiloro – The Little Breath; Claire Power – The mountain)
Young Photographers from Italian Academies, YPIA #4
Independent Publishing. Identity and innovation
Ragusa Photo Festival 12
From August 30 to September 30, 2024
97100 Ragusa Ibla
Italy
https://www.ragusafotofestival.com/
Mario Cresci. Limen, Threshold of passage
From August 30 to September 30, 2024
Palazzo Garofalo
Corso Italia 87
97100 Ragusa Superiore
https://www.ragusafotofestival.com/mario-cresci-limen/
https://www.ragusafotofestival.com/residenza/
https://fondazionezipelli.it/
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