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    From the series "Un luogo bello" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Un luogo bello"
    From the series "Cast Out of Heaven" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Cast Out of Heaven"
    From the series "Cast Out of Heaven" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Cast Out of Heaven"
    From the series "Highlight" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Highlight"
    From the Series "Highlight" | DER GREIF
    From the Series "Highlight"
    From the Series "Highlight" | DER GREIF
    From the Series "Highlight"
    From the series "Hotarubi Summer Fairies" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Hotarubi Summer Fairies"
    From the series "Hotarubi Summer Fairies" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Hotarubi Summer Fairies"
    From the series "The River Ran Black" | DER GREIF
    From the series "The River Ran Black"
    From the series "The River Ran Black" | DER GREIF
    From the series "The River Ran Black"
    From the series "It Was Once My Universe" | DER GREIF
    From the series "It Was Once My Universe"
    From the series "It Was Once My Universe" | DER GREIF
    From the series "It Was Once My Universe"
    From the series "Overtourism" | DER GREIF
    From the series "Overtourism"
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    Fotografia Calabria Festival 2025: On shared roots and places

    Article by Ilaria Sponda

    Photography where history, heritage and community co-exist

    Fotografia Calabria Festival was founded in 2021 and is the first widespread photography festival based in Calabria, one of Italy’s southern regions. Organized and promoted by Associazione Pensiero Paesaggio, under the artistic direction of Anna Catalano, it is conceived not only as a physical space, but also as a platform for reflecting on photography as a contemporary language – capable of capturing ongoing changes and transformations – while also highlighting its social, cultural, and artistic dimensions.

    Each year, the festival revolves around a different theme and showcases projects – including premieres – by photographers from around the world. Through their works, these artists offer compelling and diverse portraits of our times. From 2022 to this year, the festival featured works by Greif Alumni Fabian Albertini, Klaus Pichler, Laura Pannack, Hyunmin Ryu , and Sofia Uslenghi . This year, Grief Alumna Claudia Fuggetti is presenting her project “Metamorphosis” as part of the festival’s exhibition programme. Since its inception, the festival has indeed also prioritized the inclusion and support of young and emerging photographers.

    Shared roots: Fotografia Calabria launches an open call for photographers around the festival’s theme

    For its fourth edition, Fotografia Calabria Festival chooses the theme "Common Roots: Places", an invitation to explore the deep connection between the spaces we inhabit and the roots – physical, cultural, emotional – that bind us to them. Places are not merely settings, but extensions of our personal and collective memory; meeting points between past, present, and ever-evolving identities.

    With "Common Roots: Places," Fotografia Calabria Festival invites photographers to submit their work to the 2025 Award – an opportunity to look beyond the surface and delve into the layered complexity of the spaces we inhabit. The theme calls for visual reflections on how places, in their constant state of transformation, serve as mirrors of our identities revealing who we are, who we were, and who we are becoming.

    A glimpse into the festival’s upcoming exhibitions

    The fourth edition of Fotografia Calabria Festival will feature fifteen powerful and diverse exhibitions, bringing the visions and perspectives of photographers from across the globe to the heart of Calabria. This year’s program highlights projects that delve into the relationship between space, identity, and memory, spanning from documentary to conceptual research, archival practices to visual experimentation.

    Among the first names announced is Lys Arango, a Spanish documentary photographer and storyteller based in Paris. Her long-term project “The River Ran Blank” explores the dramatic transformation of Asturias, a northern Spanish region once synonymous with coal mining. Arango documents the human, cultural, and environmental impact of industrial decline while tracing the region’s path toward renewable energy and ecological restoration.

    Also making her Italian debut is Marie Tomanova, a Czech-born, U.S.-based photographer, with her deeply personal series “It Was Once My Universe”. Created during her first visit back home after eight years, the work reflects on dislocation and belonging, exploring the tension between one’s roots and new horizons. Through intimate, time-suspended images, Tomanova navigates nostalgia, estrangement, and the evolving notion of home.

    From the historical to the collective, Archivio Luce Cinecittà – in collaboration with Fondazione FS Italiane – presents “La memoria delle Stazioni”, a photographic journey through Italy’s major train stations, including Trieste, Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Messina. The exhibition uses archival images to underscore these stations as spaces of transit, encounter, and shared memory.

    Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak brings the harrowing “Highlight”, documenting war crimes committed during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. Through stark, direct imagery, Palinchak captures the devastated silence of occupied territories – torture chambers in Kherson, mass graves in Izium and Bucha, bombed civilian areas, and looted cultural institutions. Supported by the Embassy of Ukraine in Italy, the work is a powerful act of remembrance and resistance.

    Japanese artist Kazuaki Koseki, recipient of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, introduces “Summer Fairies”, a poetic study of the Himebotaru fireflies endemic to the Yamagata forests. Their bioluminescent dances during summer nights evoke the Shinto animist worldview and speak to the fragile harmony between humans and nature – now threatened by the climate crisis.

    Italian visual artist Alessandro Toscano presents “Overturism”, a digitally manipulated series examining mass tourism’s impact on Italy’s historic cities. Iconic landmarks become symbols of commodification, revealing the thin line between cultural appreciation and exploitation. The project, already recognized by Fundación Ankaria/PhotoEspaña and MIA Photo Fair, critiques the transformation of urban identity in the age of global travel.

    Photographer Alessandro Mallamaci offers “Un luogo bello”, a poetic exploration of the Sant’Agata valley, which flows from the Aspromonte mountains through Reggio Calabria. Balancing detail and broader vision, Mallamaci captures the coexistence of beauty and decay, revealing a landscape marked by time, memory, and contradiction – a visual homage to his homeland.

    Finally, Iranian photographer Hashem Shakeri presents “Cast Out of Heaven”, a haunting portrayal of satellite cities around Tehran. Initially conceived as public housing utopias, these urban zones now embody neglect, alienation, and social exclusion. Through desolate high-rises and barren landscapes, Shakeri reflects on exile and isolation – a theme that runs throughout his acclaimed trilogy shown at FOAM, ICP, and Paris Photo.

    Additional exhibitions and artists will be announced in the coming weeks, further enriching this year’s powerful and multifaceted program.

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    Ilaria Sponda

    Ilaria Sponda is an in(ter)dependent curator, writer, and editor. She lives and works in Munich. She holds a BA in Arts, Media, and Cultural Events from IULM University, Milan, and a MA in Culture Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Her focus of interest lies in photographic art, media ecologies, globalization, and image circulations. She works at the intersection of contemporary art, image-culture and their distribution. Her research and work are rooted in in(ter)dependence as a curatorial practice itself. Her curatorial work has indeed been supported by alternative dialogical work of knowledge sharing outside common circuits of financial support given both the current economic crisis and exclusion policies at play in the art world.