Is called "New Citizenships, Conflicts, and Reconciliation – Identity, Territory, and Migration in Contemporary Europe". It's the new one photographic exhibition of the MuPa, Landscape Museum of Torre di Mosto, a museum space in the Venetian hinterland, which has managed to carve out an important space for itself in the regional culture, thanks also to the collaboration with the Foundation of VeniceThe exhibition, which will remain open until March 29, 2026, explores the relationship between face, identity, and belonging in a Europe undergoing profound transformation. The common thread is clear: citizenship is no longer defined solely by birth or nationality, but by encounter. It's not a border, but a relationship. In an era marked by demographic decline, mobility, and identity conflicts, photography becomes a valuable tool: not to explain, but to open spaces for visibility and dialogue..
This exhibition invites us to stop in front of the faces of others and to recognize in their gazes our own transformation. Through five photographic projects, By Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, Jan Banning, Joseph-Philippe Bévillard, Niccolò Rastrelli, and Francesco Finotto, the journey recounts a century of ways in which photography has imagined, constructed, or questioned the concept of citizenship. The journey opens with the portraits of Erna Landby-Dirksen, who in the 1930s sought to capture the essence of citizenship in the faces of German peasants The essence of the "people." These are powerful, yet ambiguous images: they show how portraiture can become a tool for identity construction, or even manipulation. The present speaks to us of plural, fragile, and shifting identities, with Jan Banning, who photographs the process of Rwandan reconciliation after a terrible civil war: victims and executioners who return to look each other in the eye after the genocide.
Joseph-Philippe Bévillard instead portrays the Irish travellers, a nomadic community struggling to be seen and recognized. Niccolò Rastrelli instead gives voice to young Afro-Italians, protagonists of a new, already multicultural Italy. Finally, Francesco Finotto closes the journey with the Portraits in Transit: suspended faces, without shadows, which tell the universal condition of becoming.
The MoPA exhibition was created by Finotto himself, who, in addition to being a photographer, was also a respected university professor of urban planning and curator of several exhibitions.
Professor Francesco Finotto, how did the idea for "New Citizenships, Conflicts and Reconciliation" come about?
The idea was born from the intersection between the study I was doing on Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, this German photographer, whose books I had found, and the proposal I received from the association Welcoming APS, to photograph the students of the Italian language course in San Donà di Piave, who come from all over the world and are here to learn Italian and then also to work, but who are not Italian citizens; perhaps they will become Italian, perhaps not. This sparked a discussion about the possibility of combining the two. I was familiar with the work of other photographers, Banning, Rastrelli, and together with the director of MuPa, Giorgio Baldo, we discussed “We are putting on a beautiful exhibition at MUPA, bringing this testimony of a photography that is not just aesthetic, not just technique in the construction of the image, but is also testimony, experience, knowledge.”
And in this period it is also a very topical political and hopeful discussion…
Exactly, it is above all a contemporary discourse which affects us all and which also gives a little hope, in the sense of saying that if there are conflicts, they are inevitable, because when different cultures come together it is not always a walk in the park, but there'it is also the possibility to listen, to reconcile, to resolve conflictsThere's not only conflict, there's not only otherness, but also the possibility of coming closer. It's a process of rapprochement, and if there's a lesson to be learned for me, it's that we're both at stake, all the elements. Those who are photographed and those who photograph, those who participate in the exhibition and those who are visited—in other words, everyone questions their own identity. So if there's a message, it's this.
From this perspective, what is the value of photography today?
Photography inherited from painting a very classic genre of image, which is linked to representation. When photography arrived, with much cheaper means than before, it became possible to take portraits of people, and so many photography studios opened up to the world to take portraits at a low cost. However, photography also allows you to meet new people and gain experience. The idea of this exhibition is to bring together knowledge, that is, opening our eyes to the world and gaining experience. And the idea is to do it on a topic that affects us all, because we're getting a little older.
Europe is aging, and the lines sometimes fill up with newcomers arriving as best they can, from the other side of the world. Reconciling these two things is complicated, because the culture of those who live there is different from the culture of those who arrive. There are conflicts, objective difficulties—in short, it's not a walk in the park! Furthermore, a country like Italy hasn't had a significant colonial past, so we're still a nation made up of homogeneous people.
What common thread unites the artists present at Torre di Mosto?
This is the first ever exhibition in Italy of Erna Lendvai – DircksenShe was very famous in Germany because during the 20s and 30s she had a large studio in Berlin, was a fashion photographer, and took large portraits for the bourgeoisie. Immediately after the First World War, she began frequenting the northern beaches and began meeting fishermen and farmers. She fell in love with those faces and over time began collecting them, first on vacation and later on expeditions. Her idea, when she published the book in 1932, was that the farmers, fishermen, and lumberjacks were the true face of the German people.
And in a world that generates conflicts the Dutch photographer found himself Jean BanningHe was in Rwanda a few years ago and took these portraits with the surrounding context, which are technically called environmental portraits. His photos don't feature brother and sister, neighbors, or friends, but rather the victim and the perpetrator, the result of a terrible conflict. Thirty years later, and through a process of rehabilitation and reconciliation, these subjects have found the strength to reconcile, and this is the visual testimony, while the captions tell their horrific stories.
There's a side to the coin and another, to say that this isn't the only way to stay together in a relationship. So I called Joseph-Philippe Bévillard, an American photographer from Boston. He's been photographing Irish Gypsies for 15 years, those who live in relationships that know no boundaries, but whose social group is based on connections and knowledge, not on belonging to a land. What was interesting to me was that there's a way of life that knows no boundaries, but is a way of being together in relationships.
And then there's the Florentine Nicholas RastrelliAmong the many works he's done, the one that interested me the most is this one on Afro-Italians: we were Italian-Americans, right? And now we have Afro-Italians, with whom we're having a bit of a hard time. Niccolò, with photos of his chief physicians, surgeons, artists, singers, athletes, and so on, tells us: “Look, we're already in the second generation”There are 17 examples of Afro-Italians, black Italians, as he calls them. There's nothing extraordinary about it; we're already in this world, we just need to acknowledge it.
Then, lastly, there are my photos “work in progress", 35 portraits of Chinese, Moldovan, Romanian, Colombian, people from Ghana, Mali, Egypt, Morocco, but I didn't go around to find them. I went into a simple room and took photos like Erna, very close-ups. She used black, I used white, because I removed the shadow. They are faces without shadows. There's no difference. They are portraits in transit, people who are passing by. Maybe they'll stop, maybe not. But the idea is that we too are in transit, our identity too is in transit.
So, what kind of world are these photos portraying?
We live in a mobile world; I don't want to say more, otherwise it becomes too complicated. But when we look at those faces, the relationship isn't asymmetrical; there's no one on the other side, and we on this side are safe; there's always a movement that concerns us. That's why I said that in the end... a photography exhibition is also knowledge, It's not just entertainment, because it gives us the idea of transformation. We look at these images and we can also see beyond. I'm not saying change, but, well, get involved, right? And photography is a way to do it..
To conclude, we ask Francesco Finotto if this exhibition will have a continuation.
As for the exhibition, it will probably have some developments and may even tour Italy. While theongoing project, what I'm doing will surely have further developments, because I'm collecting these portraits and within 1-2 years we will definitely have a specific exhibition dedicated to "portraits in transit".
