From July 11th to November 3rd, the international photography festival Cortona on the Move returns to Cortona, in the heart of Tuscany, now in its fourteenth edition. The protagonist will be the body, the subject of photography and a tool for investigating ourselves in a festival entitled "Body of evidence".
The numbers of the next edition of the Cortona On the Move International Photography Festival, presented in the noble hall of the Gallerie d'Italia in Piazza San Carlo in Turin, are four collective exhibitions, 18 individual exhibitions, 6 locations and 4 months of festival, which it will run from July 11th to November 3rd.
The pinnacle of the event will be, like every year, on the inaugural days of the festival from 11 to 14 July when, in Cortona, the greatest national and international experts in the world of photography will meet, engaged in events, presentations, talks and workshops , to promote reflection on current events and the past, through an investigative tool that is photography.
“Also in the 2024 edition, Cortona On the Move confirms itself as a cultural catalyst event – explains Veronica Nicolardi, director of the Festival – offering a reflection on the contemporary world through the eyes of the photographers and curators it hosts. With a commitment to inclusion, the festival opens up to an increasingly wider audience, in this case with the new exhibition designed for children, becoming a stage for artistic expression and critical discussion, where photography becomes a tool for understanding and transform the world. The production of original and unpublished content, interaction with the territory, the international perspective and those collaborations that promote cultural contamination remain at the center of the festival's mission".
“Since the birth of photography, the body immediately established itself as one of the main subjects of the new medium – explains Paolo Woods, artistic director of Cortona on the Move.
Supporting Paolo Woods in the artistic direction of the festival this year will be the collective born and raised within Cortona on the Move, Kublaiklan, responsible for photographic curation.
The body becomes 'Body of evidence', a body of crime to be looked at and investigated in its many nuances and declinations, according to the interpretation given by photographers from all over the world and selected for this edition of the Festival. Among these are Myriam Boulos, Carmen Winant and Philip Montgomery, all three present with projects exhibited for the first time in Italy. Miriam Boulos brings her work Sexual Fantasies to Cortona on female sexual fantasies in the Middle East, while Carmen Winant will exhibit “The Late safe Abortion” on the theme of abortion. Montgomery will be present with the acclaimed American Mirror on the internal fractures of American society, now more relevant than ever in view of the elections. The work entitled “Restraint and Desire” by the couple of photographers Ken Graves, who passed away in 2016, and Eva Lipman, for the first time in Cortona, in Italy and in Europe, is significant.
There will be four group exhibitions this year. Through them, the festival's mission will be realized, which is to conceive new projects and produce new exhibitions, such as "The Body as a canvas", curated by Lars Lindemann and Paolo Woods, which allows images born in the field of anthropological research to organically coexist with contemporary art projects, family scenes with street photography, portraiture and historical photography.
Among the works there are images by Chloé Jafé, Klaus Pichler, Denis Rouvre, Herbert, Charles Fréger and Florian Spring.
"Celestial bodies. A journey through the Alinari Archives" is curated by the writers Nicola Lagioia and Chiara Tagliaferri, created in collaboration with the Alinari Foundation for Photography, the oldest archive in the world which is made up of 5 million photographs, dating from 1840 to the present day and property of the Tuscany Region, with iconographic research by Rita Scartoni.
Paolo Woods and Irene Opezzo will curate “This is the end”, on the ways in which death has been portrayed by artists and photojournalists for the purpose of documentation or celebration, through historical, vernacular, journalistic and personal works.
A Cortona On the Move production in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d'Italia is represented by the collective exhibition “Cronache d'acqua-Immagini dal Nord Italia”.
This is a unique and original exhibition, the result of a project commissioned by Gallerie d'Italia Intesa Sanpaolo with Green & Blue to the Cesura photography collective, capable of offering a reflection on the symbiotic and often fragile relationship between the Earth and the human being , an intrinsic connection between humanity and the world it inhabits, in which the body is placed as a guest that interacts with the environment, more or less consciously.
The exhibition “They don't look like me” underlines the collaboration with the Tuscan Autolinee which, since 2021, has supported and produced photographic projects in partnership with Cortona on the move.
Rastrelli's work starts from the investigation that the Florentine photographer conducted on the phenomenon of cosplayers, traveling between Italy and Kenya, which generates ironic short circuits between lower-middle-class normality and the extraordinary nature of a dreamed life. Thanks to the idea and contribution of Autolinee Toscane, for the 2024 edition of the festival, the project is enriched with a further stop in Japan, the country in which the phenomenon is most popular.
The collaboration between Doctors Without Borders and Cortona on the move has been renewed, giving life, for the first time, to an original production entrusted to Rehab Eldalil, a young Egyptian artist who created a project inside the reconstructive surgery hospital of MSF in Amman, Jordan, following its usual photographic practice.
Through a participatory and multidisciplinary methodology, the project “From the ashes I rose”, a journey to the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Jordan puts the hospital's patients at the center of the story, celebrating their resilience and strength.
New to this edition is the exhibition entirely designed and set up for children and their families. With “Giro giro corpo”, Photobooks for children and adults, created in collaboration with Spazio BK and Kublaiklan for editorial research, it intends to undertake a more inclusive path and address the theme of the human body in a simple and engaging way, also through workshops, workshops and playful experiences dedicated to children. The exhibition is part of the initiative of OTM Company, which launched a new series of children's books entitled "The world in your eyes", in collaboration with the publisher Les Grandes Personnes, which will be presented in the opening days of the Festival .
The series was created with the aim of exploring and celebrating the power of photographic language, recognizing the importance of early visual experiences in the cognitive, emotional and social development of children.
Together with the confirmation of the locations of the past editions of the festival, such as Palazzo Baldelli, the Girifalco Fortress, station C near the Camucia Cortona railway station, the former Meat warehouse and the Via Crucis, this year the courtyard is added of Palazzo Casali, one of the oldest civil architectures in the town, now home to the MAEC and various Cortona institutions.
The Cortona On the Move Festival receives the patronage of the Tuscany Region, the Municipality of Cortona, the support of Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d'Italia, main partners, with the contribution of the CR Firenze Foundation and the support of Autolinee Toscane, Sony and Medici senza Borders.