Turin has embraced art and photography with the third edition of EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival. Drawing over 5,000 visitors in its initial four days, the festival’s widespread exhibition path has connected key Turin cultural institutions and numerous independent art and cultural venues. Through the visual power of images, the festival tackles themes such as metamorphosis, empathy, the cycle of life, change, and many other critical issues. Photography, with its ability to capture fleeting moments and represent altered realities without deviating from the truth, can be considered an artistic medium that closely reflects objectivity.
The festival encourages introspection, urging viewers to look beyond appearances and question the relationship between identity and representation, body and image, the superficial and the hidden. Indeed, “Laying Bare” is the theme of this third edition, curated and produced by CAMERA – Italian Centre for Photography. It is promoted by the Steering Committee, comprising the City of Turin, the Piedmont Region, the Turin Chamber of Commerce, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, and Fondazione CRT, in synergy with Fondazione Arte CRT and Intesa Sanpaolo, and coordinated by Fondazione per la Cultura Torino.
This year, the festival symbolically began at CAMERA – Italian Centre for Photography, reinforcing Turin’s status as a city of photography. In addition to the already-opened Edward Weston exhibition, CAMERA’s project room features “Toni Thorimbert. Donne in vista” (Prominent Women), curated by Walter Guadagnini. This exhibition originated from an idea by Luca Beatrice, the Turin-based art historian, curator, and professor who passed away last year and was deeply cherished by the city’s artistic community. The project, entirely dedicated to the female form, showcases black and white portraits and shots taken by Toni Thorimbert over his thirty-year career. For this occasion, well-known personalities make surprise appearances, reminiscent of a television show.
Gallerie d’Italia hosts the solo exhibition of Nick Brandt, a highly impactful project that, even in just a few shots, illuminates invisible communities and prompts reflection on crucial issues like climate change. In the immersive space below, a frequently overlooked yet universal theme is explored: the end of a relationship. Through the exhibition “Replaced,” curated by Brandei Estes, photographer Diana Markosian employs autofiction, reconstructing a relationship marked by fragility, romance, and the uncertainty of its end in a film.
Independent exhibition spaces such as Quartz Studio, Almanac Inn, Cripta 747, Witty Books, Mucho Mas!, and Jest also participated, joining forces for a collective exhibition dedicated to metamorphosis. At Quartz Studio, Anna Orłowska investigated a personal story of the artist and her family, weaving a narrative between the ancient village of Sandowitz in Poland and the region’s vanished communities. A tent serves as the photographic support, immersed in the earth of the old village and transformed by the reddish hues of the industrially rich soil, creating a powerful narrative of rebirth, cyclicality, and the passage of time.
Almanac Inn reveals the most sensitive layers, exposing fragility with Cristina Lavosi’s exhibition “E non dono celeste” (And Not a Heavenly Gift). Through a film and audiovisual installation, the artist critiques dominant constructions proposed by institutions in a choral performance that calls for new rules and awareness. Meanwhile, at Mucho Mas!, Claudia Amatruda’s metamorphosis in “Hypersea” imagines new forms of evolution and hybridization between the human, animal, and artificial.
The arcades of Piazza San Carlo display De Chirico-esque metaphysical images, set in scenes populated by two circus figures created by Paolo Ventura. These images are inspired by the photographic archive of an Italian acrobat couple active in the 1930s, balancing their profession with their relationship.
In the Crypt of San Michele Arcangelo, the festival lays bare the contemporary Frankenstein interpreted by Yorgos Lanthimos, with a series of stills from the film “Poor Things” (2023). At the heart of these stills is actress Emma Stone, bringing cinema into exhibition halls and offering a new perspective.
The EXPOSED program is rich and multifaceted, featuring exhibitions and events until June 2nd. Beyond the official festival lineup, additional exhibition projects were presented, such as Anouk Chambaz’s “Sometimes I Get Goosebumps,” curated by Gheddo in Recontemporary’s video art space. Three distinct videos intertwine, narrating a twilight journey along the Italian-Slovenian border, accompanied by a lullaby evoking memory, place, and loss, and two parallel reflections on nature and artifice, conservation and intervention.
This edition of Exposed is once again a gift to the city of Turin, which, through photography and its narrative and persuasive power, dismantles obsolete paradigms of thought and opens up new stories and visions, laying bare hidden or forgotten thoughts and issues in everyday life.
