The Ragusa Foto Festival, now in its 12th edition, continues to offer interesting photography with fifteen exhibitions by authors of the stature of Ferdinando Scianna or Antonio Biasiucci, who, together with Mimmo Paladino, reinterprets the ancient game of tombola, and various projects, including that carried out by Mario Cresci during his artistic residency in the Sicilian city, which gave rise to the exhibition Limen, soglia di passaggio. The international event is also dedicated to the promotion of young talent and focuses on the different languages of contemporary photography.
An opportunity not to be missed to experience this land connoted by a deep charm and discover qualified authors and photographic productions. The 2024 edition of the Ragusa Foto Festival, under the direction of Stefania Paxhia, creator and founder of the event, and the artistic director Massimo Siragusa, sees creativity and production flourish even though this year’s claim is Prendersi una pausa (Taking a Break).
A constructive pause, as Paxhia explains: “A way of slowing down the speed and tension that characterise modernity, in a constant search for time that flees and eludes us. To be able to take a break does not to stand 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 pause is a heaven in which I lose myself”) Salvatore Quasimodo, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote.
“Sicily is also the protagonist of the works on display, demonstrating the vitality and innovation of contemporary photographic production, open to dialogue across artistic and geographical borders”, Stefania Paxhia says.
The highlights of the festival are the exhibitions at Palazzo Cosentini, Palazzo La Rocca, the deconsecrated church of San Vincenzo Ferreri and the Ibleo Garden
Furthermore, from 29 September to 29 October, the works of the four winners of the ‘Young Photographers from Italian Academies’ competition, YPIA #4 are on show.
Limen, soglia di passaggio
As already mentioned, among the exhibitions of the Ragusa Foto Festival, there is Limen, soglia di passaggio (Limen, threshold of passage), whose title is evocative. It is intriguing to discover the creative work that Cresci has produced during the Artist Residency (a novelty in this edition) proposed by the Festival.
The images lead us into a hybrid reality, made of paper, papers and imagination: an artistic project based on his interaction with the territory and the cartographies of Sicily collected in the “Cesare e Doris Zipelli” collection of the Banca Agricola Popolare di Ragusa, which attest the geopolitical interpretation of the island between the 16th and 19th centuries as well as the complexity of the cultural heritage.
The exhibition at Palazzo Garofalo, Limen, soglia di passaggio, fascinates and explains. And it also conveys the motivations for photography that Mario Cresci tells us about.
“Photography is kind of a part of my life”, he says. “I have a non-photographic background, having attended the upper-level course in Industrial Design in Venice. Italo Zannier used to teach a photography course here: it was then that I decided not to be a designer, but rather to use photography for design purposes.
It was 1964 when 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 up the darkroom and opened up to the world”.
How has all this had an impact on your approach to photography?
“My way of photographing is rooted in multidisciplinary studies and experiences, blending the study of photographic language with contemporary art. I confront myself with the images of the artistic heritage, a source of endless 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. It has a kind of ambiguity that was expressed, for example, in 1969, at the Galleria Il Diaframma (directed by Lanfranco Colombo) in Milan, where I designed the photographic “Environnement” with a thousand photographs inside as many transparent cylinders”, he explains.
All of this is concentrated in the works of art that Mario Cresci has created in Ragusa. A challenge between the discovery of the territory and the maps (which are a representation of the territory). A ‘chasm of potential multiplicity’, as Calvino says in Lezioni americane, for Cresci photography is never an end in itself, but it is always part of a story in images that 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 travellers and of the work of European cartographers of the time, During this mission in the Ragusa area, I got to know in-depth the territory and the value of cartography, which changes over the centuries, like the island itself, which is formed and transformed. It is the landscape described by the great writers”, Cresci adds.
In fact, in the series of collages, this extended time is expressed in the continuous visual transition between ancient maps of Sicily, navigational books and contemporary landscapes, while the images of the bright territory of Ragusa represent a direct experience of this journey. In the constant search for the “focus of a thought”.
Paola Sammartano
Tutte le mostre del Festival
Ferdinando Scianna – Dormire, forse sognare
Antonio Biasiucci e Mimmo Paladino – Tombola
Mario Cresci – Limen, soglia di passaggio, Residenza s’artista per Fondazione Zipelli
Simona Ghizzoni – Isola
Luca Campigotto – Waterviews
Angelo Raffaele Turetta – Cronache dalla Finzione
Loredana Nemes – Sicilia
Marco Zanta – This is the way it is
Viola Pantano – Anemos
Umberto Coa – Stadi di Sicilia
Memoria Iblea – a cura di Alfredo Corrao
Miglior Portfolio 2023 (Alessandro Cristofoletti – ‘Uniti da ciò che separa’; Ciro Battiloro – Le Petit Souffle; Claire Power – La montagna)
Young Photographers from Italian Academies, YPIA #4
Editoria Indipendente. Identità e innovazione
Ragusa Foto Festival 12
From August 30 to September 30, 2024
97100 Ragusa Ibla
Italy
https://www.ragusafotofestival.com/
Mario Cresci. Limen, Soglia di passaggio
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/
