Realpolitik 2018-2023

Luca Santese and Marco P. Valli are the co-authors of Realpolitik, a photographic project of critical and satirical reflection on the iconography of communication and propaganda that characterizes Italy’s politics today.

Luca Santese and Marco P. Valli, active in the last decade in the contemporary photography landscape with acclaimed publications like Found Photos in Detroit (Arcara/Santese) e Bakeca (Adamo/Valli), are the co-authors of Realpolitik, a photographic project of critical and satirical reflection on the iconography of communication and propaganda that characterizes Italy’s politics today.

Since 2018, Santese and Valli are building a systematic and authorial documentation through a series of independent real-time publications on the main events and protagonists of the Italian political landscape. The latter include Boys Boys Boys, Popolopopolo, Lega Nord Party, MoVimento Lento, Mask off, and Tik Tok Tak, released by Cesura Publish, the independent publishing house of the photographic collective Cesura.

The photographic project appeared in various national and international publications. Among those, it stands out a portrayal of the minister Matteo Salvini on the cover of the well-known Time Magazine. Moreover, the project received extensive recognition across a series of experimental installations, including at Base Milano, Cinema Palazzo in Rome, FotoForum in Bolzano, Magazzini Fotografici in Naples, and Alcart Festival in Alcamo.

Through a renovated exhibition project in collaboration with Cesura, BASE Milano, and Contemporary Cluster Rome, Santese and Valli aim at enhancing their work with a fine-art photographic itinerant exhibition focusing on the printed photograph as means of documentary and artistic research. The selected images, among the most iconic of the project, will expose the viewer to photography intended not exclusively as a means of documenting the present but also as an enlivening critical tool.