How many times, as adults, do we say “if only I was twenty again”? A phrase, an expression that, in an ideal world, would free us from the responsibilities and burdens of being grown-ups and take us back to a time bathed by the waters and lightness of youth, when everything was still a wonderful possibility and the future was just waiting to be written.

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But what does it mean to young people today to be twenty? Twenty is an age of contradictions; twenty-year-olds are adults, but often still live at home with their parents; they are connected to the whole world, but the loneliness can be overwhelming. They face huge expectations, both personal and social: finding a fulfilling job, building meaningful relationships, giving a sense to their own existence, and imagining a better world, for themselves and others.

This year, Fotografia Europea wanted to follow this path, walk part of the way alongside the young people of Generation Z, who have grown up at a time when technological progress has opened up infinite possibilities, but also unprecedented crises to be tackled, individually and collectively. This generation is rediscovering the importance and need to fight for their rights and for a more equitable future.

The projects chosen examine this and much more besides, drawing attention to stories that may be new and unusual but are also bursting with that boundless vital energy that makes you believe, at least once in your life, that you can change the world.

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Artistic Direction Statement

Youth is both a relational concept and state of transformation; a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. It’s a time marked byself-discovery, idealism, uncertainty, and boundless potential. Identities takeshape and belonging matters. Pulsing with energy and the power of dreams, youthis a universal yet also deeply personal journey.

For the 20^th edition of the festival we have brought together a group of photographers whose works record the mercurial, mysterious feeling of being alive as a young person in societies around the world today. From candid portraits and moments of tenderness to dynamic depictions ofactivism, we are offered glimpses of young people navigating worlds,challenging the status quo and raising their voices in an age of vast global transformation. A dance between the collective and the intimate, history andprivate experience, we aim to celebrate this complex and vital stage of life.

^{Tim Clark, Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart}

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Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective

Once again, the CHIOSTRIDI SAN PIETRO take on a leading role in the city thanks to ten exhibitionsthat explore the theme of this year’s festival.

The seven ground floor rooms will welcome Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective, aproject curated by Thyago Nogueira from the Instituto Moreira Salles that tells the story of the Japanese photographer who, over the course of his sixty-yearcareer spent documenting and exploring post-war Japanese society, has changedthe perception of photography forever. With an avant-gardeand visually powerful artistic approach, Moriyama has succeeded in telling the story of the gap created in the wake of the US military occupation of Japan,between ancient Japanese tradition and accelerated Westernisation. A living legend of photography and a pioneer of street photography, Moriyama comes to Fotografia Europea with a retrospective that goes beyond his iconic shots, providing a chance to admirerare photographic books and magazines alongside large-format installations, allowing visitors to immerse themselves fully in his creative world.

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Andy Sewell: Slowly and Then All at Once

On the first floor, the British photographer Andy Sewell presents his project Slowly and Then All at Once for the first time, in which he explores various forms of power and protest through a sequence of images across several panels. This rhythm, together with the physicality given to the bodies by Sewell’s close-ups, allows visitors to get right into the heart of the protest, to be overwhelmed by it and to feel its intensity, establishing connections with the scene’s protagonists. In a time characterised by ecological collapse, growing inequality and inadequate political responses, the project issues an invitation to get actively involved against cynicism and resignation. What can be done to help future generations? What is the current impact of climate change on young people?
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Claudio Majorana: Mal de Mer

The exhibition project Mal de Mer by Claudio Majorana takes us on a journey into the delicate and complex world of adolescence, a time when everyone is caught up in searching for themselves while feeling trapped by insecurities and uncertainties. The young people portrayed by Claudio Majorana are full of questions, fears and doubts, but their rapid and frenetic thoughts move spontaneously against a backdrop of evocative landscapes: summer camps, forests, silent cemeteries and other spaces on the outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania.
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Ghazal Golshiri and Marie Sumalla: You don’t die

The exhibition You don’t die, by Ghazal Golshiri and Marie Sumalla – an Iranian journalist and French photo editor for the newspaper Le Monde, respectively – tells the story of the historic uprising by the Iranian people that broke out after the tragic death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, when the girl was just twenty-two.  Her death was the result of the violence she was subjected to following her arrest by the morality police, who claimed she was dressed in a way that did not respect the strict rules imposed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet another injustice that inflamed the Iranian people, bringing them out onto the streets to challenge the most brutal repressions.

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Vinca Peterson: Raves and Riots

In her project Raves and Riots, the British artist and photographer Vinca Peterson collects shots taken on her travels around Europe. Great Britain, France, Italy and other countries are the places where she uses photography to tell the story of a specific mindset, that brief moment of complete freedom felt when taking part in a rave, rally or demonstration. The illegal nature of these events, combined with the tension typical of them, offers the viewer what the photographer describes as the “subversive joy” revealed by these images.

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Jessica Ingram: We Are Carver

In We Are Carver, the photographer Jessica Ingram uses a documentary language of immediacy to invite us into one of the world’s largest military installations, the George Washington Carver High School in Columbus, Georgia, to follow the cadets as they move from adolescence towards adulthood, and to portray the hopes and fears of a generation getting ready to shape its own future.

Thaddé Comar: How Was Your Dream?

In the large central corridor on the first floor of the cloisters, Thaddé Comar displays How Was Your Dream?, which explores new forms of demonstration and insurrection in the post-contemporary age dominated by methods of social control that are increasingly modern and ubiquitous. . Faced by a sophisticated surveillance system, the Hong Kong demonstrators developed a series of ingenious techniques to protect their identities with masks, glasses and other accessories, which would gradually lead to the loss of singularity in favour of a collective individuality.

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Toma Gerzha: Control Refresh

Control Refresh is the result of the work by Toma Gerzha, a young photographer of Russian origin who grew up in Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the life and environment of Generation Z in Russia and Eastern Europe, influenced by tradition, social media and politics in equal measure. The project was interrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, before resuming to include the profound changes brought to the protagonists’ lives by the war.

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