Familiar Stranger /
The Exhibition

Familiar Stranger /
The Exhibition

Where: Spazio Labo’ (Strada Maggiore 29, Bologna, Italy)
When: 15 January - 5 March, 2020
Opening Hours: from Monday to Friday, 3pm-6.30pm
Vernissage: 15 January from 7pm

Familiar Stranger’s Book Presentation: 25 January 6pm with Erik Kessels, Chiara Bardelli Nonino (Vogue Italia), Rocco Venezia (PHmuseum), Giuseppe Oliverio (PHmuseum), Laura De Marco (Spazio Labo’).

Opening hours during ART CITY Bologna: Friday January 24th, 3pm-8pm; Saturday January 25th, 11am-12am; Sunday January 26th, 12pm-6pm

On the occasion of Art City Bologna 2020, PHmuseum and Spazio Labo’ present the group show Familiar Stranger – Collective imagery at the time of mobile photography, following the conclusion of the first “PHmuseum Mobile Photography Prize” – a photo contest through which 11,000 mobile device’s photographs from around the world have been collected. The exhibition proposes to reflect on the typical behavioural models of the virtual environment, triggering a dialogue between the authors exhibited and those elements and themes that distinguish contemporary online fiction. As defined by the American psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1972, Familiar Stranger is a concept that refers to those individuals who do not know each other but share some common attributes such as interests, employment, social position and so on. For instance, Milgram mentioned those people who take the same train every day and are able to recognize faces of individuals already seen but with whom they have never interacted and whom they probably know nothing about. Moving this concept into a virtual environment, it is interesting and stimulating to explore the existence of potential familiar strangers in the vastness of the online world. Social networks actually represent a complex set of human relationships in which interactions are given through posts, tags, shares and likes. As a special event within the exhibition, on Saturday January 25th we’ll host the presentation of Familiar Stranger, the first photobook published by PHmuseum, and a round-table on the topic of post-photography and mobile photography with Erik Kessels, and Chiara Bardelli Nonino, photo editor of Vogue Italia, in conversation with Laura De Marco (director and curator of Spazio Labo’), Giuseppe Oliverio (director of PHmuseum) and Rocco Venezia (curator of PHmuseum).

The show will feature 24 main images, plus an installation with other 900 images, and interactive screens where visitors will be able to browse all 11,000 images submitted to the PHmuseum 2019 Mobile Photography Prize.

In partnership with Spazio Labo’, within Art City Segnala 2020.