Come il vento

Photography of the places

 

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Colonia

9th February – 3rd July 2026

Opening: 6th February, 7pm

Curated by Ralph Goertz

 

The exhibition “Come il vento” originated as a spin-off from ‘No Place like Home. Italian Photography since the 1980s’, the largest retrospective exhibition of Italian photography since “Viaggio in Italia” in 1984. Featuring around 60 works by 10 Italian photographers, “Come il vento” presents individual explorations of the medium of photography in Italy and one of the most important figures in Italian photography: Guido Guidi.

 

Alessandra Dragoni, LIBERA POESIA, 2023

‘Come il vento’ examines the so-called ‘photography of the places’, which Guido Guidi, together with Luigi Ghirri, Gabriele Basilico, and Olivo Barbieri, established as a new artistic development in Italian photography since the late 1970s. This approach has been reinterpreted by subsequent generations. With ‘photography of places,’ these photographers attempted to create a special feeling of belonging and closeness to their own territory, especially to the areas between city and countryside. For these artists, photography is therefore less a means of visual representation and more a focus on the spaces in which people's lives actually take place.

 

Luca Nostri, Piazza Baracca, looking east from the hanging garden, Lugo, 2020

 

Marcelo Galvani. Borgo Tossignano, 2016

 

The photographers featured here are united by their intellectual and sensory engagement with place as a form of collective memory. Through their individual artistic approaches, they explore the identity of places and people. 

Although there was no single school of photography at an art academy in Italy, most of the artists featured here studied under Guido Guidi at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Ravenna or the University of Venice. Through their clear visual language, which plays with the visual strategies of documentary photography, they create striking works full of poetry and reflection, far removed from all the clichés of the ‘Dolce Vita’ and ‘Bella Italia’.

 

Guido Guidi, Ina casa, 1999

 

 

Participating photographers:

Carmen Colombo, Matteo Di Giovanni, Alessandra Dragoni, Cesare Fabbri, Marcello Galvani, Guido Guidi, Francesca Iovene, Allegra Martin, Francesco Neri and Luca Nostri.