For the summer of 2021 the Forte di Belvedere focuses on photography with a project with a very evocative and current title Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Italy self-portrait in the mirror: two large photographic exhibitions set up on the three floors of the Buontalenti building

Exhibition Hours

Summer

June-October

Tuesday – Friday

4:00 pm

–

9:00 pm

Saturday – Sunday

10:00 am

–

9:00 pm

Monday

Italiae. From Alinari to the masters of contemporary photography, born from an initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, it’s produced by Fratelli Alinari Idea SpA and promoted the Alinari Foundation for Photography (an organization founded by the Tuscany Region for the conservation, management and enhancement of the Alinari photographic heritage) and Pienovuoto by Massimo Vitali, curated by Sergio Risaliti. The initiative Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Italia self-portrait in the mirror is promoted by the Municipality of Florence and organized by MUS.E thanks to the CR Firenze Foundation, which has promoted free activities for children and teenagers at Forte Belvedere and Villa Bardini, Unicoop Firenze, in collaboration with Mazzoleni. The exhibitions are exceptionally open free to the public.

Pienovuoto by Massimo Vitali

The exhibition involves the great photographer Massimo Vitali, known throughout the world for his ‘metaphysical’ shots.

The photos on display are a portrait of our contemporary society amidst solitudes, multitudes, full spaces, gatherings and empty spaces, where nature or cities seem to have isolated a few survivors in the midst of grandiose, sublime architecture and landscapes, which still dominate unchallenged life.

Massimo Vitali’s work aesthetically draws on the history of art and not just that of photography. Italian of origin, Anglo-Saxon by training and with an international vision and attentive to the evolution of avant-garde research at the turn of the last century and the current one, the artist appears as a photographer inclined to leave no traces in his works of moments linked to identifiable historical facts.

His world appears as if suspended in a cinematic still image. There are never any details that can be identified with historical or current events, except for the titles which, at times, refer to crowded gatherings or evenings of fun at the disco.

Italiae. From Alinari to the masters of contemporary photography

An archive of 75 photographers – from Gianni Berengo Gardin to Paolo Pellegrin, from Gabriele Basilico to Gian Paolo Barbieri, from Luigi Ghirri to Mario Giacomelli and Ferdinando Scianna – who have portrayed the Bel Paese each in their own way and with their own particular interest.

A century and a half of history in a composite anthology of shots, to recreate an ideal gallery of portraits and memories, capable of witnessing the richness of the country and at the same time the extraordinary vitality of Italian photography. The selection of shots, without pretending to summarize in its entirety the complexity of Italian photography, in any case poses itself as a challenge, and a means to explore aesthetic choices and languages that have gone through over 160 years of images, including atelier photos. , pictorialism, conceptualism, news and artistic research.

A journey that begins with the photographs of the Alinari brothers and from that vast world which around them, in terms of collections and archives represented, has been forming to reach, through the great masters of twentieth century photography, up to the most up-to-date experiments. The result can also be read as a brief summary of the history of photographic techniques that starts from the calotype and reaches virtual photography in games.

The exhibition is divided into three sections – Landscapes, Works, Faces -, each capable of constituting an ideal geographical, historical and artistic path, to capture, in a multifaceted variety of themes, the mutations of a constantly evolving country: North and South, city and countryside, work and parties, tradition and innovation, social history and cultural life. Visions where the surprise is in the “staging”, in the original choices of each performer.