Photography Exhibition - Satoshi Fujiwara: EU

Fondazione Prada is hosting “EU”, an anthological exhibition by Japanese photographer Satoshi Fujiwara at the Osservatorio in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan until October 16 (exceptionally free access to both the Osservatorio and Fondazione Prada Milano until this date).

Curated by Luigi Alberto Cippini, the exhibition suggests an representational alternative to the stylistic features for the current “European photographic identity”. According to Cippini, “contemporary photographic production seems to be regulated by strict resolution, impact and distribution standards. An increasing number of freelance reporters daily documents social and political events within and on the edges of the European Union, producing images that, although free from any rigid classification standards, seem to be nonetheless subject to specific aesthetic, accessibility, spatial and content regimes”.

Satoshi Fujiwara (Kobe, Japan, 1984), initiates a pressing and critical action, also through the heterogeneous definition of his photographs, diverting from the standards of photo-journalism and from an exclusively documentary dimension, thus producing a new emerging lexicon.

The exhibit consists of two sections: a reconstruction of the assignment 5K Confinement and a retrospective with works from different series (i.e. #R(2015-ongoing), The Friday: A report on a report (2015), Police Brutality (2015), Venus (2016-ongoing), Continent (2017-ongoing), Green Helmet (2016).

The set up for “EU” is made up of assembled images, which aim to remove any linear narrative context. This operation was inspired by the re-elaboration of an exhibit designed by Herbert Bayer for The Road to Victory: a procession of photographs of the nation at war, held at MoMA in New York in 1942.

Portions of frameworks, along with a fragmented human presence and surveillance, all converge in some kind of tazibao: this kind of public information used during the Chinese Cultural Revolution is combined with contemporary visual association constraints, such as video editing and digital manipulation softwares.

“EU” is accompanied by 5K Confinement. HD Environment Surface Surveillance, curated by Luigi Alberto Cippini and published by Fondazione Prada.