From May 27 to July 27, 2025, Pavilion 9b of the Rome Slaughterhouse presents PORTO ROMA by Mohamed Keita, promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and by Special Company Palaexpo, organized by Special Company Palaexpo, curated by Carmen Pilotto.

The exhibition tells the city of Rome through the unique gaze of Mohamed Keita, a young photographer born in Ivory Coast who now lives and works between Rome and Bamako (Mali). His images, alien to clichés and glossy representations, lead into a universe of hidden details, intimate urban landscapes, and human presences that narrate stories of everyday life and resilience.

Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in Keita's continuous wandering through Rome, in search of the subject to immortalize, to discover it on a human scale, with its imperfections, wonders, and secrets. The title of the exhibition, Porto Roma, reflects the photographer's personal vision, giving back to the audience the Rome experienced by Keita through his research: not just an eternal city but a port of the soul, where the ancient dialogues with the present, humanity merges with the silence of spaces.

The exhibition, as a whole, is a portrait of Rome: a welcoming port, a place open to those who arrive from outside, as it happened to the photographer, but also a starting point for those who leave, like the Romans who have departed; a place where time flows and intertwines with the lives of those who inhabit and pass through it, at the same time home, refuge, and stage for encounters.

The exhibition path begins with some of the photographs taken by Keita during his first ten years in Rome and collected in the volume Roma 10/20. The exhibition continues with his most recent photographic research, Before-After, documenting his incessant return to the same places to capture changes and suggestions: each photograph becomes a meditation on time and on thetransformations that alter places, on fleeting shadows that tell different stories, on faces that blend into the landscape, redefining it. His flâneur gaze transforms every urban glimpse into a work to contemplate. The spontaneity of the shot, the play of light and shadow, the often overlooked details become key elements of his visual poetics.