Concept 2022

Raymond Meeks, Halfstory Halflife, 2017, ©Raymond Meeks, Courtesy Casemore Kirkeby

The artistic direction of the festival – Tim Clark and Walter Guadagnini – maintains the poetic vocation of last year, taking inspiration for the theme of the 2022 edition from a phrase by the great French writer Albert Camus.

At a time of great upheaval, a moment of transition and growth that follows numerous extraordinary hardships and crises that have now come to define our era, Camus’s maxim gives us food for thought about the inner forces that drive us as individuals in what we do, in every moment of our lives.

A principle that intends to shed light on another facet of human nature; the ability to push back against adversities, to not submit to momentary complications, and of course, courage, without neglecting to mention the ability to persist, not through hope (which Camus despised for he considered it “tantamount to resignation”) but through the actual choices of the present, with all the circumstances – both favourable and unfavourable – that the world throws at us. The translation of these thematics into the language of photography, and, by natural extension, visual culture at large, focuses on the notion of resistance as well as the different potential reactions to the onset of a new reality.

As we now have a chance to re-exist it is clearly a point at which to consider the choices about one’s role in the world, creatively and in a myriad of ways; to be courageous and to honour the importance of always looking at the world with open eyes – the will to live through the “winter” in the knowledge that “an invincible summer” is indeed within us.

We look forward to seeing you in Reggio Emilia from 29 April to 12 June 2022 for a new edition of Fotografia Europea!