Favourites from Bologna Fotografata Exhibition
BOLOGNA FOTOGRAFATA. People, places, photographers (May 12, 2023 – January 28, 2024) is an exhibition I visited when I was in Bologna.
Coming from a city that is ever changing and the new constantly replacing the old, I was fascinated and moved to recognise landmarks in the city that still exist today.
Here’s a selection of photos and wall text I snapped with my phone.
The city remains the same, Bologna, as do the years we traverse: from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century. The title is once more Bologna Fotografata – as it was for the 2017 exhibition, and the venue is once more the underpass in Piazza Re Enzo. However, the story being told by this new exhibition, although similar in many ways to the previous one, is different.
In addition to the experience garnered on that occasion, we now have the opportunity to avail of some photographic collections recently acquired by the Cineteca di Bologna, as well as – thanks to the images shared through the Bologna Fotografata online portal – numerous public and private archives, allowing us to discover never-before-seen views of the city.
A broader, more harmonious and more assorted vision. A new story told through portraits, newspaper photographs, advertising images, police files, family albums… in the belief that each document possesses, in its own way, the ability to add a small but significant part to the history of Bologna.
Alongside iconic images, included to articulate the historical context of our story, it is the documentation of the everyday photographic life of the city, composed of faces and street corners, poses in studios and interiors of family homes.
We wanted images to tell the story, not simply be illustrations to a story that has already been told. For this reason, special attention has been given to the photographers who, through a vast range of tastes, skills and motivations, created this immense archive of the city.
Therefore, we have entrusted them with the task of suggesting the reasons and the methods that led them to choose which Bologna to photograph and how to go about doing so.
Giuseppe Savini (exhibit curator)