From 26 April to 2 March 2025
Palace of Museums
26 April 2024 – 2 March 2025
inauguration Friday 26 April at 7.30 pm
Passage Zones proposes a reflection on darkness with the aim of telling the important value that this has in the collective imagination. The starting point is the numerous nocturnal works that Luigi Ghirri created during his production. They are the places "lit in a provisional way, or the spaces that experience their own discreet semi-darkness and which only temporarily become bright in a festively provisional way", in which an alternative reading of reality is activated. For Ghirri it is therefore the flashes, the flashes, the small intermittences like those of fireflies that express the best lighting methods since they keep the perception of darkness intact, preserving the shadow areas. Compared to the history of the photographic process, the relationship between light and dark is essential. The different applications of artificial light have made it possible to extend the possibilities of the medium, not only with respect to the image production capacity itself, but by expanding its use in dark or poorly lit places such as catacombs and caves. An example can be found in Albert Londe's 1914 volume entitled La photographie à la lumière artificielle , among the first manuals in the history of photography to illustrate in detail the different possibilities of artificial lighting to be applied to photographic technique. Published at a time of great enthusiasm towards the new possibilities offered by technological developments in the field of artificial lighting, the volume actually straddles two worlds. A compendium of the numerous - and often dangerous - techniques for illuminating the dark, the manual actually reveals an alchemical fascination with light which refers to that pre-electric "paganism", to a nature animated by an invisible force capable of recalling the almost lost properties of darkness and night. The exhibition, starting from the experiments on the medium and on visibility at the end of the Sixties, carried out by Franco Guerzoni together with Luigi Ghirri and Franco Vaccari, therefore presents the work of important authors who with their works offer "micro-ruptures", generated by sudden illuminations and capable of revealing that relationship between light and dark hidden in nature. In his famous speech of 1923, entitled The Ritual of the Serpent, Aby Warburg states that "the lightning imprisoned in the thread - the captured electricity - has produced a civilization that makes a clean sweep of paganism" and, in a certain sense, of sacredness that links man to nature. This fear actually finds a new horizon of understanding in the works of Mario Airò, Gregory Crewdson, Paola De Pietri, Paola Di Bello, Stefano Graziani, Armin Linke, Amedeo Martegani and Awoiska Van Der Molen. The different projects evoke in different ways that space of possibilities offered by the dark, in which flashes, openings and illuminations allow new configurations to be taken on.
Photo: Luigi Ghirri, Bologna, 1987, Luigi Ghirri Heirs Archive
Exhibition promoted by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia (Civic Museums, Panizzi Library) in collaboration with the Luigi Ghirri Heirs Archive. Made possible thanks to European funds from the Emilia-Romagna Region. With the Art Bonus contribution from IREN.
Opening time April 26th 7.30pm-11.00pm
27 April 10.00-23.00
April 28th 10.00am-8.00pm
from April 30th to June 9th
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10.00 – 13.00
Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10.00 – 20.00
from 10 to 30 June
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10.00 – 13.00
Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10.00 – 18.00
Monday closed
NIGHT PASSAGES
PHOTO GALLERY
Saturday 4, 11, 18, 25 May, 1 and 8 June 2024, 10.30 am FREE GUIDED VISITS to the exhibition
The initiative has free entry and no booking required
Info: 0522 456477 Civic Museums – offices, via Palazzolo, 2 (Mon to Fri: 09.00 – 13.00 / Tue, Thu: 14.00 17.00)0522 456816 Palazzo dei Musei, via Spallanzani, 1
opening time
via Spallanzani 1, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Opening hours
opens - closes | last entry | |
monday | Closed now | |
tuesday | 10:00 - 13:00 | |
wednesday | 10:00 - 13:00 | |
thursday | 10:00 - 13:00 | |
friday | 10:00 - 18:00 | |
saturday | 10:00 - 18:00 | |
sunday | 10:00 - 18:00 |
From 19 April to 24 November 2024
I tuoi fantasmi sono miei: Expanded Cinema
ACP - Palazzo Franchetti, Venice