Mantua seen by its photographers

Giulia Flavia Baczynski was born in Verona in 1982. She graduated in architecture at the Politecnico in Milan. During her university years she became interested in photography and in the representation of the space generated and inhabited by man. During the years to come the concept of space, urban, rural, imaginary or conceptual, became the focus of her research. She worked for architects, university professors and cultural associations, also carrying out her own projects that have been exhibited in Italy and abroad. She has also published many of her works.

Giuseppe Gradella was born in Mantua in 1973, today he lives in Curtatone (MN). He graduated in architectural planning in Ferrara, becoming passionate about contemporary art and photography during his university years, although he started photographing only in 2008. He has published various works on the site PhotoVogue Italia, and collaborates with architecture and design studios, also exhibiting in solo and collective shows.

The monuments are here represented at night. The role of artificial light in the contemporary urban setting is fundamental to understand space and the way we relate to it. The gaze interprets the interaction between the architecture of the city and light, which is an essential part of the project in its multiple functions. Light is an element at the heart of artistic research, it is essential for the interpretation of a city, urban planning, and in general it plays a central role in our interpretation of the world. Light is a source of shocks, a powerful tool that can change our perception of the landscape and of what lays beyond us. Light is an extreme metaphor of modernity.

Marco Introini graduated in architecture. He is a photographer specializing in landscape and architecture. He teaches Architecture Photography and Representation of Architecture at the Politecnico in Milan. In 2006 he published his work in the catalogue of the Italian Pavilion of the 10th Biennial of Architecture curated by Franco Purini.
He was interviewed by Letizia Gagliardi for the book La Misura dello Spazio, where he features among the twenty most influential photographers of architecture of the past ten years.
In 2015 he was commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Culture to document post-war architecture in the region of Lombardia.
In 2015 his project Milano Illuminista was selected by the Fondo Malerba per la Fotografia .
In 2016 he held a solo exhibition, Ritratti di Monumenti, at the Museum MAGA, and Warm Modernity_Indian Paradigm at the 21st Triennial. The book, by the same title, curated by Maddalena d’Alfonso, has won the RedDot Award 2016.

He has been photographer since 2007, and has developed an interest for projects focusing on the interaction between man and territory. In 2013 he was awarded the second prize ex-aequeo at the competition “Portfolio Italia – Gran Premio Epson”. His works have been exhibited in galleries and festivals in Italy and have been published in magazines and on websites. At the moment he is working on a long term project on Italian and European coastlines. He is co-founder of the Festival di Fotografia Contemporanea Diecixdieci. “I was looking for beauty and I found it”: the images of the building confirm this. It is an historic and architectural heritage that is intimidating for of its dimensions and enchanting for of its beauty, that is at times almost violent but also surprisingly delicate. “I wanted to capture the beauty in the rigorous harmony of the shapes, in the overlapping of real and imaginary spaces, of past and present”.

Anna Positano lives and works in Genoa, where she graduated in architecture. She completed her studies with a master in photography at the London College of Communication in 2009. Her work has been exhibited internationally in private galleries and public institutions. Positano works on her own artistic and research projects and on commissions for architects and journals.

"And then I'm seized by another kind of vertigo, that of the detail of the detail of the detail: I get sucked into the infinitesimal, the infinitely small, when I was previously lost in the infinitely vast"

Italo Calvino, America Lessons, 1988.

Fabrizio Vatieri was born in Naples in 1982, today he lives and works in Milan. He became interested in photography while studying architecture. His work is an investigation into the identity of places and into the relationship between photographs and imagined reality.
In 2012 he started to work on the Mediterranean scenario; a first step of this research was the project Mediterranean Drama, exhibited in Pelagica in 2014, a curatorial and research project he carried out together with Laura Lecce.
Since 2013 he has been involved as curator and as artist in Exposed, a project and platform that uses artistic practices, created with the aim of investigating the transformations of the city of Milan that was preparing for the 2015 Expo.
His work has been exhibited in various galleries, institutions and festivals in Italy and abroad. Among the main shows: Milan Triennial, Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), Casa del Mantegna (Mantua), Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki, Fondazione Forma Meravigli (Milan), Bitume Festival (Lecce), Cortona On The Move. His photographs have appeared in many magazines and journals among which Abitare, Domus, Rivista Studio, L’architettura del Mondo, Infrastrutture, MobilitaÌ, Nuovi Paesaggi, The Abramovic Method. In March 2016, together with other photographers and artists, he co-founded Op-Fot, a studio specialized in photography of art works, architecture and design, with various studios in Italy, the main one in Milan. Members of the studio are: Nicola Nunziata, Anna Positano, Tommaso Tanini, Matteo Girola, Alberto Sinigaglia.