Rome welcomes a new photography center with three exhibitions

A Home for Photography at the Former Mattatoio

After undergoing a major renovation, the spaces of the Mattatoio are now open to the public with three exhibitions featuring artists of global appeal and interest: Irving Penn, Silvia Camporesi and Real bodies, imagined bodies, a project uniting three artists from Japan, Iran and France.

The Center of Photography is the first public institution in Rome completely dedicated to the visual arts and it is part of a wider project aiming at making the Mattatoio a brand new City of the Arts.

The opening ceremony on January 29th coincided with the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the twinning between Rome and Paris and it was widely attended by local authorities and journalists eager to witness the transformation of the industrial site of the Mattatoio into an art center. «The Photography Center is the cornerstone of a major cultural and urban regeneration project, aimed at transforming Rome’s former slaughterhouse complex into one of Europe’s largest centers dedicated to contemporary arts and culture,» said Manuela Veronelli, president of the Fondazione Mattatoio.

Irving Penn. Photographs 1939-2007

The highlight exhibition features more than one hundred photographs by Irving Penn, coming from the Parisian Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP).

The American photographer of Jewish and Russian origins is widely recognized as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth

century and this exhibition rightly celebrates his talent across different macro areas of his work. The photos are organized into six thematic sections: from the early works, travels across continents and communities, to the portraits of great artists and celebrities of his times, nudes, to the last sections with fashion and still life prints.

Each photo witnesses a different way of framing reality and the evolving photographic techniques, from gelatin silver to platinum printing until the arrival of pixel and inkjet print and colour prints. Regardless of the methods used, through his long career, Penn captured historical moments which remains iconic and timeless.

Silvia Camporesi. There is a time and a place

The first floor of the gallery is dedicated to Silvia Camporesi, a philosophy-trained photographer born in 1973 who has dedicated much of her research to the Italian landscape.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), a cult classic soaked in mystery and temporal suspension. Similarly, Camporesi’s works explores the concept of fracture encouraging a reflection on the tensions between reality and artifice, nature and culture, presence and absence, past and present.

Her photos span from La terza Venezia to Journey to Armenia, Atlas Italie, Almanacco Sentimentale, Mirabilia, and Omaggio al Mattatoio.

«Silvia Camporesi’s work perfectly represents that special and magical fusion between artistic expression and autobiographical need that photography manages to render in such a unique way,» commented curator Federica Muzzarelli.

Real bodies, imagined bodies. Identity, belonging, construction of meaning

Curated by Daria Scolamacchia, this contemporary group exhibition brings together artists from Japan, Iran, and France to examine pressing social issues including gender equality and the perception of the female body in the digital age.

Japanese artist Kensuke Koike, already familiar to the Roman public and the Mattatoio from a recent solo exhibition, presents women’s images slightly rearranged and edited such as Ikebana woman and Vertigo, to challenge the viewers’ perceptions. In Alix Marie’s work, Maman, an installation consisting of five large scale images of a mother’s breast, printed on silky fabric and arranged along a circular hollow metal structure, the experience evokes a sense of intimacy and separation.

Women are again the main focus in Nina Boukhrief’s stretched figures in Lycra and in the colorful photos by Forough Alaei. In her works, female Iranian fisherwomen, also called “daughters of the sea”, are portraited in their daily jobs in the open sea to highlight their courage, resilience and will to support their families.