From September 21st to October 28th 2012, Macro – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma presents the Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma. The Festival is promoted by the Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali e Centro Storico di Roma Capitale and co-produced by Zètema Progetto Cultura. The Fotografia Festival at MAacro is the centrepiece of photography in Rome, with a programme of events that began in January 2012 and culminates with the Festival at the museum.

The Fotografia project, curated by Marco Delogu, has continued to gain prestige and international reach as it promotes contemporary photography in all of its various forms and styles through a year-long festival, offers opportunities for emerging talent and focusing increasingly on original work. The run-up to the Festival has featured a number of events over the last few months: Incontri di Fotografia brought internationally-renowned photographers to Rome for talks; the Fotografia in Collezione exhibition showcased the initial core of Macro’s new photographic collection; and top photographer Anders Petersen came to Rome for a residency prior to his project that will be on show at the Festival.

Work is the theme of this 11th edition of the Festival – a classical subject of twentieth-century documentary photography – reinterpreted with humankind at the heart of the action, and as viewed from new standpoints and through new narrative approaches to photography.

What changes have occurred since the twentieth century’s often mythologizing “vision” of work, laden with physical toil and the teeming masses? How has this kind of work endured alongside more sophisticated, often solitary, high-tech jobs that are hard to make images of? And how do these old and new visions come together? The underlying framework of the world – and indeed of photography, which to date remains one of the most effective tools for analyzing contemporary society and styles – may perhaps be found in the answers to such questions.

This year, Rome Commission celebrates its X edition with two renowned photographers, Paolo Ventura and Anders Peterson, who photographed Rome with total freedom of expression. Many of these shots will be added to Macro’s photography collection. Bigger and better than ever, this year’s Festival includes over 60 exhibitions and events, involving 180 photographers and more than 2000 photographs on show. Exhibitions, talks, a space for independent publishers and self-publishing, book signings, competitions, portfolio analyses and workshops are all taking place at MACRO Testaccio, the Festival’s main location for the third year running.

For the first time, Fotografia has also expanded to Macro’s other venues in Via Nizza, and the La Pelanda building in Testaccio. Once again, a great many foreign cultural institutes and public and private exhibition spaces are putting on events and shows for the Festival.

The complete program of the festival, with daily updates, is available at www.fotografiafestival.it.

Programme
Macro Testaccio
• The group show Camera Work, curated by Marco Delogu, brings together international photographers of the calibre of Roger Ballen, Yto Barrada, Claire Chevrier, Raphaël Dallaporta, Joseph Koudelka, Chris Killip, Fosco Maraini, Nina Poppe, Simon Roberts, Lars Tunbjörk and Florian van Roekel.

• I mondi dei lavori perduti is an exhibition documenting the work of the Japanese Ama fisherwomen, curated by Marco Delogu and Paola Ugolini. On the centenary of his birth, images by Fosco Maraini and contemporary photographs by young German photographer Nina Poppe capture these mermaid women in two different historical periods as they hunt pearls and fish for shellfish and mollusks, diving to the seafloor without oxygen in simple – sometimes improvised – garb, drawing on knowledge acquired and passed down through the generations.

• This year’s Rome Commission (the tenth time that this important project focusing on the city has been commissioned, starting in 2003 with Josef Koudelka and since including Martin Parr, Guy Tillim, Alec Soth et al), has been awarded to Paolo Ventura. In Lo zuavo scomparso, Ventura has reconstructed the scenes and characters typical of his oeuvre to create a timeless Rome suspended between reality and fiction.

• Three exhibitions are curated by guest curators selected through the 2010 Call for Curators:

-Fields
Curated by Paul Wombell
Photographers: Ulrich Gebert, Jackie Nickerson, Mishka Henner
What does it mean to photograph today’s rural life in the United States, approximately seven years after the FAS, Farm Security Administration’s photography program? In Fields, three contemporary photographers confront issues similar to those of their predecessors; working on the land and labor mobility issues, and yet challenging the orthodox documentary approach, creating new ways to see rural life.

-This is Not an Office
Curated by Marc Prüst
Photographers: Jeroen Kramer, Marco Vernaschi, Tim Hetherington, Stanley Greene
By putting together the various autobiographical materials of the four war photographers, Marc Prüst wants to illustrate how their experience in war scenarios has influenced not only their personal lives, but also their professional ones. At the same time, the curator aims at showing how these images are true works of art.

-Hit the Crowd
Curated by Valentina Tanni
Photographers: Iocose, David Horvitz, Matt Richardson
Today, photography is no longer a solitary process, but more and more becomes a collaborative process. In the age of the Internet, the act of sharing is often indistinguishable from that of creating: a single gesture produces photography and generates its diffusion. Once an image has started its journey out in the world nothing can stop it: those who receive it appropriate it, reuse it, change it and put it back into circulation. Hit the Crowd explores these issues, analyzing them through the work of three artists.

• The Il paese è reale exhibition, curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, is dedicated to young Italian photographers. Highlights include Alessandro Imbriaco and Tommaso Bonaventura with a work on modern-day mafias, curated by Fabio Severo; Francesco Neri’s series of portraits of teenagers and students in and around Ravenna; Andrea Botto with a selection from his project on controlled explosions; Lorenzo Durantini’s work on the Costa Concordia; and Francesco Jodice’s video Dubai_Citytellers, investigating modern-day slavery in Dubai.

• The Lost&Found 3/11 exhibition, organized by Doozo Art Book & Sushi, comes to Rome after showing in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York and Melbourne. In the wake of the 11th March 2011 Japanese tsunami, a group of volunteer researchers attempted to return thousands of photographs found in the ruins to their rightful owners. Cleaning, drying and digitizing a huge amount of material over a three-month period, they succeeded in returning 7,600 albums and 13,000 photographs. This exhibition tells the story of this endeavour, striking the right balance of intimacy within a freestanding structure erected between the Macro Testaccio’s two pavilions to create a space that renders collective memory into image.

• One of the Macro Testaccio pavilions is hosting an Olivo Barbieri diptych of Cavezzo (Modena), which was particularly badly hit by the recent earthquake in Italy’s Emilia region. A regular photographer of this part of the country, Barbieri documented collapsed buildings, embarking on his own personal journey many years after his famous “Viaggio in Italia”.

• Macro Testaccio is also hosting an exhibition on the relationship between local areas and work, the countryside and human hardship in Sardinia, through a selection of images by Dario Coletti, Franco Mapelli and Massimo Mastrorillo.

• Also on show are Burma’s stories, nine multimedia pieces by photography students of Christophe Loviny, the artistic director of the Yangon Photo Festival, as part of a project presented during the Yangon Photo Festival 2011. The award-winning projects were selected by a jury chaired by Aung San Suu Kyi, raising the visibility of future generations of Burmese photographers. The project, in collaboration with the association Corto Arte Circuito, will be presented during Asiatica Film Mediale at La Pelanda (from 5th to 13th October).

• The 5th IILA Prize for young Latin American photographers. Macro Testaccio is hosting the “Reflex Roma” exhibition, showcasing work by 2011 prizewinner Nicolas Alejandro Sanin, along with a slideshow of this year’s shortlisted Premio IILA entries. Dominican Republic photographer Alejandro Cartagena won the prize with his Los Car Poolers project, documenting a practice adopted by workers in Mexico for getting to work, saving time and money, and, unwittingly, helping to protect the environment. The other shortlisted photographers are: Christian Rodríguez (Uruguay) – Honourable Mention; Coni Rosman (Argentina); Fabián Hernández Mena (Costa Rica); and Verónica Gutiérrez Valenzuela (Mexico).

Macro Via Nizza
• Yto Barrada: Riffs is an exhibition curated by Friedhelm Hütte (Global Head of Deutsche Bank Art) and independent curator Marie Muracciole. After successfully showing at the Guggenheim in Berlin, the Wiels in Brussels, the Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, RIFFS comes to Macro between 20 September and 11th November 2012 with a revised selection of images chosen especially for the museum. After Macro, the exhibition travels on to the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Zurich. The Moroccan artist won the ‘Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2011’ Prize.

• Anders Petersen: Rome, a diary 2012 is an exhibition curated by Marco Delogu that runs from 20th September to 28th October 2012. The photographer was a resident of the museum in June and July, when he came back to work on the city of Rome seven years after his “Rome Commission”. This time around, he has assembled a new diary from which thirty photographs were selected for exhibition, alongside ten previously unseen images from his 2005 diary.

Awards
• The second Call for Entry competition for international photographers. The fifteen shortlisted projects are being projected at Macro Testaccio throughout the Festival, raising the profile of these photographers. Superegg, a nonconventional communications and marketing agency, is printing a catalogue with the pick of the photos from the fifteen finalists in the “Call for Entry 2012” competition, as well as staging an exhibition at their venue in Via dei Magazzini Generali 31 (near Macro Testaccio) at 10 pm on Saturday 22nd September.

• The final weekend of the Festival, between 26th and 28th October, sees the Affordable Art Fair, dedicated to contemporary works priced at less than €5000, come to Rome. After successfully running in Milan, the Affordable Art Fair is working with the Festival to promote photography by young artists, including the sale of works from some of the finalists in the Young Talents Call for Entry 2012.

• The First Graziadei Studio Legale Prize for Fotografia, supporting talented young Italian photographers has awarded two grants: Andrea Botto for a project that has already begun and is underway and Francesco Neri for a new project conceived specifically for the prize. Both projects will be on show at MACRO Testaccio, where they form an integral part of the exhibition on Italian photography curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva.

Events at la Pelanda
• The Photobooks Exhibition curated by Douglas Stockdale include a selection of contemporary photobooks around the theme of “work” and a concurrent exhibition of interior double-page spreads re-photographed by the photographers.

• The Magnum Workshop in Rome (La Pelanda 20th-23rd September) is a four day practice focused photography workshop led by two experienced Magnum photographers: Richard Kalvar and Moises Saman. Each photographer will guide intimate groups of 12 participants who will have the opportunity to shoot, polish and publish their work under the guidance of these experienced practitioners (www.magnumphotos.com).

• During the Festival’s four opening days (20th-23rd September), La Pelanda is hosting a photobook fair with stands full of rare and self-published books from Le Bal (Paris), DirkBakkerBooks (Amsterdam), s.t. (Rome), Nediza (Udine), Postcart (Rome), Punctum (Rome), Danilo Montanari (Ravenna), Osservatorio Fotografico and Lugo Land (Ravenna), Contrasto (Milano), 3/3 (Rome), Cesural Lab (Pianello Val Tidone), talkinass/anti/btomic (La Spezia), Scuola Romana di Fotografia (Rome) and the Fondazione Marangoni (Florence) and SI Fest (Savignano).

• Readings, presentations, book signings and events dedicated to top international photographers, fostering debate about the contemporary practice of photography, and building on the huge success of last year’s event, which attracted more than eight thousand people to Macro Testaccio during the opening weekend alone.

Macro - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma
Via Nizza, 138
Rome 00198 Italy
Ph. +39 06 671070400
macro@comune.roma.it
www.macro.roma.museum

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 11.00 am - 7.00 pm
Saturday 11.00 am - 10.00 pm
(ticket booth closes an hour before museum closing)

Tuesday to Sunday gates open from 11.00 to 21.00 (via Nizza 138 and via Reggio Emilia 54) allowing access to free spaces: foyer, Hall, restaurant, café, terrace and Area space.

Macro Testaccio
Piazza O. Giustiniani, 4
Rome 00152 Italy

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday, 4.00 pm to 10.00 pm
(the ticket office closes thirty minutes earlier)

Tickets
Macro Via Nizza
Standard ticket: non-residents €12.00, residents €11.00.
Concessions: non-residents €10.00, residents €9.00.

Macro Testaccio
Standard: €6
Concessions: €4

Macro Via Nizza + Macro Testaccio
Standard ticket: non-residents €14.50, residents €13.50
Concessions: non-residents €12.50, residents €11.50