About - PhMuseum

PhMuseum is driven by our team ideas and collective effort. Get to know us.

About

PhMuseum is a curated platform dedicated to contemporary photography. Since 2012 we have been focused to find innovative ways to display photography, engage, educate, and connect. Thanks to this approach we have been pioneering online exhibition, with the first one launched in 2013, and online education, launched in 2017.

PhMuseum is well known for its program of grants, which offers £30,000 in cash prizes every year, the opportunity to exhibit at international photography festivals, be featured in publications and on recognised magazines such as Vogue Italia. Max Pinckers, Diana Markosian, Tomas Van Houtryve, and Laura El-Tantawy are among the winners of the past editions, while Martin Parr (Magnum Photos), Kathy Ryan (New York Times), Roger Ballen (Photographer), and Sarah Leen (National Geographic) among the former jurors.

Today we are a community of 51,000 photographers reached by more than 600,000 visitors per year. Our mission is to discover, support and promote photographers, working as an innovative talent incubator. Every year we present the work of around 120 photographers in our News section - and invite more than 60 to exhibit in our online exhibitions. We also feature 400 photographers on our Instagram and Facebook accounts while many photo editors, curators, and gallerists browse our Stories section every week to discover new projects or get in touch with us for recommendation at the moment of searching for works and photographers.

In 2020, while everybody was eventually moving online, we approached the off-line opening the PhMuseum Lab in Bologna. Our online experience has thought us that there cannot be one without the other and the Lab will become our hub for many new initiatives.

We hope you can join us, share your work with our network and enjoy the world of contemporary photography with us!

Team

Working remotely since 2012, our team strive to improve PhMuseum every day. The project is the result of our collective effort. Learn more about us and feel free to get in touch:

Giuseppe Oliverio

Giuseppe Oliverio

Director and Curator

Giuseppe (Bologna, 1985) is an Italian cultural entrepreneur.

In 2012 he launched phmuseum.com, an international platform dedicated to contemporary photography well known for its grants program and online education offering. The platform nowadays features the work of more than 50,000 photographers and represents a relevant archive for curators and photo editors worldwide.

Giuseppe has been in the jury of international awards like Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward, Gomma Grant, United Photo Industry’s The Fence, San Jose Foto Award, and Happiness Onthemove. He regularly works as portfolio reviewer at international festivals like Photo Vogue Festival, Unseen, and Visa pour l’Image. He has given talks at international festivals like Paraty Em Foco in Brazil, Cortona On The Move in Italy, Verzasca Foto in Switzerland, and Ojo de Pez Meeting in Spain, and written for TIME magazine and L'Uomo Vogue.

His first documentary, A Conscious Dream, has been selected to 12 film festivals and awarded best documentary short at 2016 Manchester International Film Festival. His second documentary, A Land, premiered as well at several film festivals across Europe, USA and Latin America.

Recently he opened the PhMuseum Lab, an exhibition and education venue in Bologna, Italy.

Rocco Venezia

Rocco Venezia

Curator and Producer

Rocco (b.1991) is an italian documentary photographer. The subject of his works originate from a personal interest in literature as well as a certain awareness of the European political and economic situations.

He holds a first class honours degree in documentary photography from Newport, University of South Wales. His work has been shown in Greece, Italy, Uk and China. His latest work, Nekyia, is a book published by the Italian independent editor Witty Kiwi in May 2017. The monograph is part of the collection at the National Art Library of Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Colección Folio at Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City.

Next to his personal work as a photographer, Rocco is working as curator and producer for PhMuseum and he is the co-founder of Photo Meliggoi, a photography residency in Greece.

Laurence Cornet

Laurence Cornet

News Contributor

Laurence is a writer, photography critic and curator based in Brooklyn who is focusing on cultural and dystopian issues. Her clients include MSNBC, Vogue, Newsweek, Blink.la, L’Oeil de la Photographie, The Magnum Foundation, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, The Long+Short, and Vice.

Veronica Sanchis Bencomo

Veronica Sanchis Bencomo

News Contributor

Verónica is a Venezuelan photographer and curator based in Hong Kong. In 2014, she founded Foto Féminas, an online platform promoting Latin American and Caribbean women photographers. Verónica has organised and produced exhibitions, projections and talks for the platform in Argentina, China, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Colin Pantall

Colin Pantall

News Contributor

Colin Pantall is a writer, lecturer and photographer based in Bath, England. He has written and photographed for a range of publications on photography, the environment and the arts including The British Journal of Photography, Foam, and The Far Eastern Economic Review.

He co-edited and wrote Magnum China which has been published in October 2018.

His photographic work focusses on his immediate domestic environment. His first photobook All Quiet on the Home Front was published by ICVL in 2017 and looks at how childhood, fatherhood and the British landscape overlap. He is currently working on his next book, My German Family Album, which will be published in 2020.

Pantall also curates events at festivals such as Photobook Bristol, Gazebook Sicily. In his other work, he runs workshops and lectures on photography at the University of Gloucester, University of the West of England, and Bath Spa University.

Lucia De Stefani

Lucia De Stefani

News Contributor

Lucia is an Italian multimedia freelance writer and editor, living and working in New York. In her work, she focuses on documentary and art photography, illustration, and on demystifying news for the teen. Her writing has appeared on Time LightBox, National Geographic, Vogue.it, and Hyperallergic.

Museum Van

The Museum Van is a metaphorical representation of PhMuseum in the real world. Since 2012 it has allowed us to connect with the photographic community of foreign countries and to spread our vision on contemporary photography.

In 2014 we went to Chile and filmed A Conscious Dream, the first short documentary of a series that aims to explore the diverse cultural heritage of the Latin American continent while exploring universal issues. The movie went to 12 film festivals across Europe and Americas and won the Best Short Documentary prize at 2015 Manchester International Film Festival.

A year after we went to Paraguay and portrayed the silent conflict between Mennonites colonies and Indigenous communities. The result is A Land, our second documentary completed in 2017 that is currently presented at film festivals.


A Land (Trailer) | Paraguay, 2015-2017

A Land is PhMuseum second short documentary. In April 2015 our team drove all the way from Buenos Aires to the Paraguayan Chaco, a semi-arid region also known as "the green hell". There, since the 1950s, Mennonites groups escaping World War II have established their colonies and progressively occupied more than 90% of indigenous communities’ territory. Without their land, natives’ ancestral way of living and culture are dramatically at risk.

“A Land” portrays this silent conflict and explores the issues and opportunities of multiculturalism.

A Conscious Dream (Full Movie) | Chile, 2014-2015

In 2014 we went to Chile and filmed A Conscious Dream, the first short documentary of a series that aims to explore the diverse cultural heritage of the Latin American continent while exploring universal issues. The movie went to 12 film festivals across Europe and Americas and won the Best Short Documentary prize at 2015 Manchester International Film Festival.

A Conscious Dream (Trailer) | Chile, 2014-2015

In March 2014 we travelled across Chile on the Museum Van, crossing the Andes, reaching the Pacific coast and driving through the Atacama desert. This is the trailer of

Brazil 2013

After Bolivia we visited Brazil in February 2013. From Sebastian Liste, Iatã Cannabrava and Corinthians supporters to Favela do Vidigal, Estudio Madalena and the beaches of Florianopolis, this is a synthesis of the atmosphere and places we went through in a month and 7000km on the road.

Bolivia 2012

In august 2012 we started our on the road adventure droving 6000 km from Buenos Aires to La Paz and back, with the aim of sharing our project and engage with the local community.

An Interview with Iatã Cannabrava

Brazilian Curator and Photographer Iatã Cannabrava tell us about photography scene in Latin America on the rooftop of his production company Estudio Madalena (São Paulo, February 2013).

An Interview with Pep Bonet

During the 9th edition of Paraty Em Foco we interviewed Spanish photojournalist Pep Bonet, co-founder of NOOR Agency, about his latest works and his thoughts on multimedia projects and nowadays documentary photography.