Cover: Alessandro Toscano, Overtourism - Rome, Colosseum
saint lucid (CS) | 1 August – 12 October 2025
From 1 August at 12 October 2025, saint lucid (CS) si trasforma in un palcoscenico diffuso per la fotografia contemporanea. Tire Photography Calabria Festival, reached his fourth edition, with a program full of exhibitions, Special meetings and projects that will animate the center of the Calabrian Tyrrhenian for over two months.
Supported by photography strategy 2024, promoted by Directorate General Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, and with the The patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, The Festival is confirmed as among the liveliest events dedicated to author photography in Italy, thanks to a curatorial proposal that weaves visual research, International education and breathing.
Among the novelties of this year, The activation of the Singapore Exchange residence, In collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Singapore and the Deck Photography Art Center, who will see the photographer protagonist Camilla Marrese, selected through an open call to carry out an artistic residence in Singapore in 2026.
Confirming its public and accessible vocation, The Festival also introduces Tiflodidactici supports designed by the architect Fabio Fornasari, In collaboration with theItalian union of blind and partially sighted, To offer an inclusive experience to blind and partially sighted people.
Great attention is also paid to training: was born this year Photography Calabria Festival Educational, With the Deloitte Foundation Support, a national program aimed at secondary schools, whose first edition involved the IIS S. Lopiano di Cetraro. The exhibition created by the students will be visible within the official program of the Festival.
Designed and organized by the Cultural Association Pensiera Landscape, with the Artistic direction of Anna Catalano, Photography Calabria Festival 2025 confirms its role as a platform to reflect on the contemporary through photography, intertwining cultures, generations and landscapes.
For this edition 2025, is reconfirmed, for the Fourth consecutive lap, the catalog published by our publishing house: 160 pages of content dedicated to exhibition projects and an introduction by Anna Catalano. The volume is Available here.
The theme and the exhibitions scheduled
Edition 2025 develops around a deep theme open to reflection: “Common roots: places", who invites you to question the link between the spaces we cross and the cultural roots, affective, Politics - who bind us to them. Places are not simple scenarios, but extensions of our collective and personal memory, spaces in which identity intertwine, belief, desires and contradictions. Some are an integral part of our daily life, others resurface as forgotten fragments; still others exist only in our imagination, but they act on us as real places. In this perspective, Photography becomes a tool to explore what the places give us back: who we were, Who we are, who we are becoming.
The theme of common roots It deeply crosses the selected projects for this edition, giving life to a visual path that unites established artists and new voices on the international scene. The sixteen exhibitions scheduled they tell real and imagined places, territories crossed by history and memory, identity in motion, family ties, belongings found or denied.
To ideally open the reflection are two authors who, from different perspectives, stage the link between memory and identity: Marie Tomanova, with the project It Was Once My Universe, tells the return to his homeland, in the Czech Republic, After years lived in the United States, giving shape to a fragile and powerful dialogue between what has been and what has become; While Lys Arango, in The River Ran Black, investigates the transformations of post-industrial cunning, documenting the transition from a mining civilization to a still uncertain future, between ecological conversion and loss of social roots.
Broken roots and wounded territories emerge forcefully in the works of Mykhaylo Palinchak, that in Highlight Document the places of war crimes in Ukraine, and of Hashem Shakeri, that with Cast Out of Heaven Show satellite cities that arose on the margins of Tehran, Symbols of isolation and missed promises. To these are flanked more lyrical and intimist visions, like that of Alessandro Mallamaci, that with A nice place returns an emotional portrait of the Sant’Agata Fiumara and the Calabrian landscape, e quella di Kazuaki Koseki, that in Summer Fairies It tells the ancient link between man and nature through the ephemeral light of Japanese fireflies.
Memory, territory and identity also intertwine in the projects of Paul Gambin (Talk to me of love), mixing landscape, Personal sound and iconography in an emotional and stratified narrative, and of Chiara Negrello, that in Caring for our past Explore the relationship between the artist and the Ukrainian caregiver who witnessed his grandmother, building a choral story made of care, coexistence and intimacy. Con In Licoreni, Andrea Salvucci Enter a spontaneous community on the banks of the sea in Catania, where a daily ritual - the collective bathroom - becomes an expression of belonging and resistance.
Also Melissa peritore works on the margins, with Cemetery, in which he tells the communities that inhabit the urban cemeteries of Manila, restoring dignity and daily life to invisible existences. A more ecological and perceptive reflection is instead that of Claudia Fuggetti, that in Metamorphosis re -reads the natural landscape as a symbolic and vital body, capable of regenerating themselves in the face of the anthropocene crisis. Another choral project is Connections, of Sofia Pagliaro and Gaia Tognoni, born from a laboratory with women who survive violence: manipulated photographs, respondent, which return space and voice to subjectivity in transformation.
The gaze expands to geopolitical dimensions with Maja Nydal Eriksen, that in Awaiting The Bridge Explore the suspended identity of the island of Quermoy, Between Taiwan and China, and closes with Jung Ui Lee, that in Urban Tattoo – This is Beautiful transforms the visual chaos of Korean commercial signs into collective memory signs and urban resilience.
To ideally close the path is Valentin Joseph Valette, winner of the Photography Calabria Festival Award 2025, International competition promoted by the Festival to support young emerging talents. His project Ashes of the Arabian’s Pearl It is a visual investigation on the Omangone of Oman, where architectural remains, Urban spaces and migrant lives tell the stratified memory of a kingdom in transition, Tra nostalgia, myth and future.
The appointments of the inaugural weekend
The program will start Friday 1 August, with theOpening in Piazza della Libertà, and a big night projection nel chiostro del Comune: “I Lupi”, unpublished video made by Cesura collective with the shots of Andrea Nicotra, Camilla Pedretti, Alessandro Sala and Marco Zanella and the curatorship of Alex Majoli - which returns a choral portrait, Intimate and powerful of the Cosenza Valley.
Saturday 2 August It will be the turn of the official opening of the exhibitions, of a Seminar conducted by Lys Arango on the theme of the energy transition and industrial memory, from the Portfolio readings with international experts such as Diego Orlando, Marco Pisciottani and Paul Gambin, and finally of the Presentation of three photographic books: "A beautiful place" of Alessandro Mallamaci, “It was once my universe” of Thomas Attitude and Marie Tomanova, and “Silence is a gift” of Brestal. An inaugural weekend full of appointments, which puts projects in dialogue, authors, Different visions and audiences.
A choral project between the territory, International training and vision
Among the special projects of this edition, also the return of Radical residence, a project of Photography Calabria Festival, Designed by Anna Catalano, Director and founder of the Festival, edited by Diego Orlando. The residence involved three young photographers - Alessandra Gatto, Arianna Mattietti Orani and Alvin ng (Singapore) - On a trip to exploit Calabria, Starting from Amarelli licorice factory by Corigliano-Rossano, between memory, community and territory. Thanks to the support of Carlomagno, who accompanied the residence along the regional territory and hosted part of the work a Palazzo Pignatelli, and to collaboration with Maeci and MUDIAC, Photographer Alvin NG will continue his research in Calabria with a new study phase in Catanzaro.
In the end, as already anticipated, The photographer Camilla Marrese was selected for the Singapore Exchange residence, A photography project Calabria Festival supported by the Italian Embassy in Singapore and the deck photography Art Center Singapore. The residence was born with the aim of promoting the cultural exchange between young artists and artists through two parallel open calls, One in Italy and one in Singapore.
Based on a large and transversal network of collaborations, The Festival is made possible thanks to the support of Carical Foundation, Carlomagno, Guglielmo coffee, The convivial, Isca Hotels, Enchantment, and synergy with important cultural and institutional partners: Cinecittà light archive, Austrian culture forum, Czech center, Ukraine Embassy, MUDIAC of Catanzaro and Archaeological Park of Sibari. The project also enjoys the patronage of Extraordinary Calabria, the Municipality of San Lucido and of the Department of Political and Social Science of the University of Calabria (Dispes), Confirming its territorial roots and constant dialogue between art, education and landscape.
Photography Calabria Festival 2025 – IV edition
Common roots: places
1 August – 12 October 2025
saint lucid (CS)
Catalog: Vanillaedizioni
Info:
www.fotografiacalabriafestival.it
www.instagram.com/fotografiacalabriafestival/
info@fotografiacalabriafestival.it