Monza Photo Fest at the First Edition. Event and exhibitions spread across public and private spaces in the city of Monza – Carlo Franza’s blog

Monza, October 2024 – Monza dresses up in photography: from 20 September to 11 November 2024 takes place there first edition Of MONZA PHOTO FEST, widespread festival that puts the world of photography at the center of interest for over a month and a half of the city, with a series of exhibitions and other initiatives with free entry designed to promote photographic art as a tool for reflection on reality, offering a panorama of diversified proposals both from a content and stylistic point of view.

Promoted and organized by Diorama Photographic projects – company with long and consolidated experience in the field of planning and carrying out photographic exhibitions and festivals – in collaboration with theDepartment of Culture of the Municipality of MonzaMonza Photo Fest was born with the intention of giving life to a new widespread event in the city area that makes photography the protagonist, involving the best cultural energies of the city. Main partners are Civic Museums Monza And Royal Palace of MonzaMain Sponsor PolaroidsTechnical Sponsor spaceBMedia Partners The Citizen of Monza and Brianza.

“The Monza Photo Fest – observes the Councilor for Culture Arianna Bettin – was born to consolidate a now recurring trend in the autumn cultural programming of Monza: that of artistic research through the camera, as an inevitable element to tell what art is today. Although the possibility of taking photographs is now within the reach of anyone with a smartphone, in the society of images there continues to exist a distance – which is important to underline also thanks to initiatives such as the one we are inaugurating – between artistic expression and seriality ( of alternating quality) that we produce daily through our cell phones and that we devour bulimically through social media. The festival aims to promote photography as a tool for reflection on reality, bringing the general public closer to an art that is still relatively young and fortunate in its revolutionary scope, which today however faces epochal challenges – like other artistic forms – imposed by the era of technological acceleration in which we live”.

“The formula of widespread exhibitions – says the Mayor Paolo Pilotto – has the double advantage of allowing everyone in the city to encounter art in all its possible forms and, at the same time, allows us to enhance contexts that are already in themselves worthy of attention and rich in culture and history such as, for example , the Royal Villa and the Civic Museums. The exhibition will guide the people of Monza and visitors in an experience that is not limited to sharing the art of photography, but which frames a context – that of the whole city – which deserves to be explored and experienced in the different styles and eras that embodies.”

The Festival involves 12 exhibition locations in Monza Between institutional public spaces, private galleries and some unconventional places which together make up a varied circuit, bringing photographic culture even outside the restricted circle of professionals and enthusiasts, to encourage its enjoyment by the general public.

An important circuit window is also open to Milan at spaceB in Foro Buonaparte 67. This exhibition and meeting space promoted by photoSHOWall – inaugurated last spring – hosts a preview of all the exhibitions that are part of the Monza Photo Fest schedule. A small sample of the wide photographic offer available in the Monza area.

With the Artistic Direction of Roberto MuttiMonza Photo Fest offers important authors of international level – Maurizio Galimberti at the Royal Palace of Monza with an unpublished work on New York and Heinz Schattner with a high-impact solo exhibition at the Civic Museums – combining them with new talented authors who are given the opportunity to showcase their qualities. A strong point of the exhibition is the variety of proposals agreed with the galleries, because it moves from reportages to the themes of portraits and self-portraits, from urban landscapes to still lifes of flowers, from the creative investigation into memory to attention to historical research photography.

“We are particularly happy to bring our long experience in the field of photographic events to Monza, a city that has immediately demonstrated a great desire for dialogue and participation both on the institutional side and on that of private galleries. All this has allowed us to create a festival that enters deeply into the reality of the city (and here we like to underline the presence of various authors from Monza) with proposals that we trust will be appreciated both by those who have long loved the always surprising world of photography, and by those who will approach this for the first time with curiosity. Monza Photo Fest is not the simple sum of the exhibitions presented, but above all the outcome of a broader cultural project aimed at demonstrating the extraordinary potential of which photography is capable. The choice to propose a panorama that varies from portrait to reportage, from flowers to landscape, from architecture to social investigation, from sport to fashion, combining more classic images with others that are the result of expressive research, is therefore not a coincidence. bold and surprising”. – Roberto Mutti, artistic director Monza Photo Fest.

THE EXHIBITIONS

ARTS<>STA

Photography as an art form

Antonio Delluzio, Gualtiero Fergnani, Pino Liddi, Giovanni Maria Sacco

19 October/2 November

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MEDICINE HEADQUARTERS – UNIVERSITY OF MILAN-BICOCCA

Life in Bicocca. Stories from the protagonists

AA.VV.

7 October/11 November

CAPITOL ANTEO SPAZIOCINEMA

Hanoi people

Enzo Rocca

1 October/3 November

FMART

The migrant and the sea

Federico Ferrari

Stay in the memories

Francesca Massei

28 September/19 October

THE SUNDIAL – OASIS OF SAN GERARDO

Every day I find my tomorrow

Margherita Nardi

26 September/10 October

LEOGALLERIES

Avant-garde photography

Bragaglia, Drtikol, Vetrovsky

28 September/12 October

MANZONI16 EVENTS SPACE

The horizon of oneself

Francesca Meloni

5 September/8 November

MF CARE FACTORY

Beyond Boundaries

Marc Evans

20 September/3 November

MARCO MONTI ART

The freedom of the gaze

Paolo Perego

1 October/3 November

CIVIC MUSEUMS MONZA

The liberation of utopia

Heinz Schattner

October 3/November 3

PALACE OF MONZA

An expressive vertigo

Maurizio Galimberti

20 September/6 October

EXHIBITION ROOM PLATFORM 7

Being Monza. Portraits of the Monzese Photographic Club

AA.VV.

2/13 October

Sports Shots. Valuable shots

AA.VV.

17 October/10 November

spaceB – Milan

The Monza Photo Fest showcase

20 September/11 November

The exhibition program is completed by some collateral initiatives which enrich the cultural offering of the festival, to attract the attention of enthusiasts, professionals and even a less specialized public: a conference by Roberto Mutti on Surrealism in photography, a workshops with Maurizio Galimberti on the potential of immediate development photography, one guided tour of the exhibition “Sport Shots. Shots of value” by the 3M Foundation as part of the Open Archives event and the presentation of a book of visual anthropology by photographer Massimiliano Verdino.

An important tool of Monza Photo Fest is represented by the paper catalogue of the event, distributed free of charge in all the spaces of the exhibition circuit and in the most significant cultural areas, to help the public learn about the event and orient themselves in the city in search of photographic exhibitions. There cover of the catalog is enriched by a work specially created for the occasion by Nicolò Quirico – “The roots of the horizon”, photographic print on collage of book pages, 2024 – which interprets a glimpse of the city center with his very personal style. The large original photograph is exhibited inside the Civic Museums in a symbolic welcome to visitors to the Monza Photo Fest. The complete festival program is available on the website dioramaprojects.it/monzaphotofest

Carlo Franza