The geographical and analytical reading suggested by the map thus dialogues with a large-format projection, a sort of backdrop in which the totality of the images is ordered in short sequences according to purely formal and compositional criteria.
The catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, is also based on the travel guide and, in the very restricted selection of buildings and images, tends to enforce the homogeneity of the work. The visual narrative is enriched by critical contributions and annotations that the photographers produced during or after their campaigns. The personal travel diary is rich in observations, anecdotes, and suggestions, reflections that interact with the images and contribute to enhancing their informative value. These travel journals, although short, reveal the sensitivity and personality of each. Read as a whole, they constitute an aesthetic reflection on the practice of photography: From these lines emerges a common cognitive tension, a never-ending relationship with places and space, a reflection on the perception of time and light, on the sense of travel and the “photographic” pleasure of discovery.
At the end of the exhibition, all the shots will flow into the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, thus enriching a public cultural heritage already of considerable value.
“With great professionalism, each photographer has agreed to put their creative experience at the service of a choral, ‘objective’ narrative, which in terms of coherence and breadth of design and fidelity of execution has its roots in 19th- and 20th-century public missions and constitutes an ideal continuation of them,” concludes Giovanna Calvenzi, president of the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
This story originally appeared in AD Italia.