KEEP THE FIRE BURNING

Keep the fire burning

Keep the Fire Burning 

Photobook exhibition curated by Francesco Colombelli, in collaboration with Centro diurno per l’adolescenza “AÏDA”.

This selection of photobooks explores how myths, fairy tales, stories of witchcraft and spirituality, popular beliefs, religious traditions and traditional clothing continue to inhabit our present. The ghosts conjured up are not just supernatural presences, but also cultural traces, collective memories, customs and archaic imagery that persist – often in latent form – in everyday life.

The chosen photobooks tell the story of something that has been handed down from generation to generation, mainly through words, example and repetition. This fragile knowledge, entrusted to memory and the body rather than to written texts, resists the passage of time but is slowly at risk of disappearing. In some volumes, these traditions still appear alive and integrated into the present; in others, they emerge as the last traces, remnants of a world that survives on the margins of modernity.

Every part of the world has “ghosts” of this kind: whispered stories, domestic or collective rituals, protective symbols, mythical figures and spiritual beliefs that continue to give meaning to everyday experience. Although they belong to different geographical and cultural contexts, these practices share the same function: to create bonds, explain the unknown, protect and remember. This varied selection aims to create a dialogue between these differences and affinities, constructing an emotional and cultural geography that crosses borders and generations.

In this context, photography – and specifically the photobook – takes on a fundamental role as a witness. It not only interprets or evokes, but also documents what is in danger of disappearing, fixing in time gestures, symbols and presences that would otherwise be destined for oblivion. An intimate and temporal object, the photobook becomes an ideal container for these “ghosts,” allowing them to be handled, opened, shared and disseminated, keeping alive the traces of an intangible heritage that continues to speak to us, if we still know how to listen.