Europe: the faces and the territory
UNCENSORED BOOKS is the inaugural exhibition of the 2nd Medphoto Festival. The exhibition brings together a series of photobooks and installations that address in a critical way, through both their content and form, the production, uses / misuses, consumption and circulation of the Image today within dominant mass ideology’s narrative systems. By exploring new dissemination and audience engagement channels, many of its featured titles point to the potential role of photography and books can assume as activism tools. Many photographers employ recycling, appropriation and manipulation of existent images encountered on the Internet and social media, as a means of exploring new ways of storytelling, while addressing the political issues inherent in the circulation and use of images. Others perform and expose through their works the present uses of the Image as a tool of political and economical control amidst the contemporary media scape, placing special emphasis on the fundamental role and responsibility of the viewer in the dissemination and validation of the final meaning.
Uncensored Books is a traveling photobook-based exhibition. Its contents are updated and reworked in site-specific installations.
The show is curated by Natasha Christia and dedicated to Lorenzo Tricoli and comprises the following works:
Installations by: ValentinaAbenavoli (Akina Books), Francesco Amorosino (self-published), JuliánBarón (KWY Ediciones), Lewis Bush (dummy/Brave Books), Edmund Clark (Here Press), ThobiasFäldt / KlaraKällström (B-B-B-Books), Brad Feuerhelm (Chaco Books), AmakMahmoodian (ICVL Studio / RRB Publishing), Carlos Spottorno (AstiberriEdiciones), Lorenzo Tricoli (Skinnerboox / D&Books), and Europe: An Illustrated Introduction to Migrants.
Photobook projects by: Patricia Almeida (Ghost Editions), JuliánBarón (self-published / Editorial RM), Lukas Birk (self-published), Martín Bollati-Rigoberto Díaz Julián-Verónica Fieiras (Chaco Books), Alejandro Cartagena (self-published), Brad Feuerhelm (Paralaxe Editions), Ben Helton (self-published), Yannis Karpouzis (self-published), Daniel Mayrit (Phree / Riot Books), Christof Nuessli (Cpress), Elisabeth Tonnard (self-published), Jan Dirk Van Der Burg (self-published), Apostolos Zerdevas (dummy) and Fictional Journal.
The exhibition will be hosted from 15th – 24th September at the Exhibition Room of Rethymno’s Cultural Center.
Curator Natasha Christia will be present at the exhibition in order to take the visitors through the exhibits and encourage their interaction with the books.
A special tour will take place on 16th September with detailed explanation of the items on display and a round table conversation is being scheduled in order to discuss the changes that photography can bring through its presence / publication in books.
From 18 to 22 September Natasha Christia will also organise the seminar “HELLO PHOTOGRAPHY. Contemporary Photography and Production: Installations, publications and communication networks”. The seminar will chart the tendencies, the expressions and the vocabulary of contemporary photography.