A Round Up of Phmuseum Days 2022 While The 2nd Weekend Officially Started

Last weekend most of the artists were in town, together with a group of book publishers, portfolio reviewers and colleagues who animated a beautiful opening weekend. Read more about the festival and see some initial images of the the shows and atmosphere.

For the second year, the international photography festival PhMuseum Days comes back to Bologna. The theme of the second edition is Today Is Yesterday's Tomorrow, an opportunity to understand the power of actions and the relationship between past, present and future. The event, curated and organised by PhMuseum, lasts until 2 October 2022 at Spazio Bianco in DumBO, hosting exhibitions, talks, screenings, portfolio reviews and a section dedicated to independent photography publishing. Among this year's new additions are three public installations in as many locations around the city. 

The first stage of the curatorial journey starts with an analysis of the present thanks to projects such as Nothing Personal by Russian photographer Nikita Teryoshin on the defence weapons trade, and Asphodel Song by French photographers Agathe Kalfas and Mathias Benguigui on the history of the island of Lesbos where migrants live with the inhabitants, themselves children of refugees who arrived in the early 1900s. The lens then shifts to the past with The Weight Of The Word by the Italians Piero Martinello and Piero Casentini, who address the cancel culture by recounting the request for the removal of certain medical eponyms born in the Nazi era; Nuke by the Argentine artist Marcelo Brodsky, who intervenes on an archive photo of a nuclear explosion, reminding us that the only way to avoid future tragedies is to disarm; Good Hope by the South African artist Carla Liesching, who studies the intersections between representation, knowledge and power in apartheid South Africa. 

The latter project acts as a bridge to a group of works that explore the relationship between space and time and reflect on the future and our perception of reality. These include The Merge by the Danish collective Sara, Peter & Tobias, which takes its cue from Elon Musk's statement that there is a one-in-a-billion chance that our reality is not the result of a computer simulation, and Mythic Humanoids by the Swedish artist Arvida Byström, a digital native who reflects on femininity linked to online presence and representation. 

Finally, balanced between past, present and future, we find La Linea D'Acqua by Italian artist Sara Palmieri, who develops a reflection on the representation and aesthetics of trauma in an attempt to resolve the fracture between individual and collective memory; Ukrzalіznitsia by Ukrainian photographer Julie Poly, who has captured the essence of travelling on her country's trains before the current conflict in what is now at once a nostalgic memory and a positive hope for the future; How To Raise A Hand by Italian artist Angelo Vignali, who upon discovering 313 prints of his father's fingers notices a striking resemblance to his own hands and embarks on a mysterious, touching and amusing existential journey. The partnership with Portofino Dry Gin, which is renewing its support for the festival once again this year, also gave rise to the Summer Glow exhibition by photographer Piergiorgio Sorgetti, who shot a series in Liguria on the feelings gathered on a typical summer day amidst the complicity of glances, gestures and details of the Italian Riviera. And then FOLIO, an exhibition dedicated to the works produced during the PhMuseum masterclass on photobooks.

As anticipated, this edition's novelties include new collaborations with a number of cultural operators in the area and a more marked presence in the city's public spaces, starting with the collective installation in Piazza Minghetti featuring 42 photos by international artists selected through an open call. The exhibition is funded by Fideuram Private Banker, and is designed to encourage a collective dialogue in public space. Together with CHEAP, is the exhibition on the notice boards in Via dell'Abbadia displaying the images of Umbai, a photographic series by photographer Munirah Almehri that imagines queer futurism in the Kuwaiti context. At the Cassero LGBTI+ Centre it will be possible to visit from Friday 23 September Neuromantic, a work by Colombian artist Ana Vallejo that combines neuroscience, psychology, images and data to investigate the theme of relationships and love addiction.

The programme of talks and photo book presentations started on Saturday 24 September, with a space dedicated to independent photo publishers present throughout the event. Among the invited publishers are Blow Up Press, BOLO Paper, CESURA PUBLISH, Départ Pour L'Image, Fw:Books, GOST Books, Havaiana Papers, Macaroni Book, RVM Hub, Skinnerboox, Studiofaganel, and Witty Books. Thursday 22 September also saw the start of The Narrative Impulse, a trans-media storytelling workshop with visual artist and publisher Salvatore Vitale: three days during which participants created a project involving the use of photography in association with other media such as sound, archive images, social platforms, video and text. Also on Saturday 24 September, we had the portfolio reviews with Bindi Vora, artist and curator at the Autograph Foundation in London, Bruno Ceschel, editor of Self Publish Be Happy, Elisa Medde, editor of FOAM Magazine in Amsterdam, Francesca Marani, global photo editor of PhotoVogue, Giangiacomo Cirla, director of Phroom, Giovanni Troilo, artistic director of PhEST in Monopoli, Marina Paulenka, exhibition director of Fotografiska in Berlin, Paolo Woods, artistic director of Cortona on the Move and Sara Occhipinti, co-founder of Studiofaganel in Gorizia.

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Tickets and the complete programme are available at phmuseumdays.com. PhMuseum Days 2022 is realised with the support of the Municipality of Bologna and is part of Bologna Estate 2022, the programme of activities promoted and coordinated by the Municipality of Bologna and the Metropolitan City of Bologna - Bologna-Modena Tourist Territory. Sponsors: Fideuram Private Banker, Portofino Dry Gin, On Luce e Design, Stepping Stone, Tierre Infissi, 1979 Investimenti. Cultural partners: Photo Vogue Festival, DumBO, Cassero LGBTI+ Centre, CHEAP, Alliance Française Bologna. Technical partners: Bologna Welcome, Trenitalia TPER, Leica Store Bologna, ItArt, Tipografia Altedo, Fuego y Matambre. Media partners: Collater.al, i-D, PHROOM, ZERO.