The shattered world and the witnesses who inform its story: Lodi Ethical Photography Festival

It occurs that pictures, when they’re intensely expressive, don’t want many phrases to explain them. This is the case with the picture by freelance Gazan photographer Loay Ayyoub that portrays a Palestinian mom crying whereas embracing a physique wrapped in a blood-stained shroud (Islam requires that burial should happen as quickly as attainable), just like the palms of this girl who remembers, in her pose and most painful anguish, our Madonna. The Tragedy of Gaza is the photographic sequence that received the brief story part of the World Report Award and this {photograph} is the enduring picture of the sixteenth version of the Lodi Ethical Photography Festival directed by Alberto Prina and the Lodi-based Gruppo Fotografico Progetto Immagine.

The 2025 version of the Festival, additionally reproduced in a catalog revealed by emuse publishing home, is actually among the many most attention-grabbing. Many of the exhibited initiatives go away an indelible mark, following the standard pendulum swinging between present occasions and the emergency of History (with a capital H) and the shocking and unprecedented tales (with a lowercase s). The synthesis that emerges after a day of visiting the eleven official exhibition venues is that of a world actually in items, with a widespread sense of loss of life and a really diffuse scent of ache. As all the time and accurately, only a few pictures are endowed with inventive sense and, exactly Ayyoub’s photograph, has an evident aesthetic aspect harking back to Renaissance non secular artwork. But it is a studying that is available in a second or third second, after having momentarily eliminated the harrowing sense of affliction and compassionate human indignation that it ought to evoke.

Palazzo Barni, within the coronary heart of Lodi, hosts, along with The Tragedy of Gaza, 5 different photographic initiatives. The struggle in Ukraine, with that twentieth-century taste because of the presence of trenches and barbed wire, is the theme of the mission that received the highlight award part of the WRA, In the Shadow of a Deadly Sky, by Italian freelance photographer Diego Fedele, able to exhibiting us what it means to dwell within the shadow of a continuing risk. The grasp award part was received by the mission of Colombian photojournalist Federico Ríos, entitled Paths of Desperate Hope. It is a humanity of mud that desperately tries to achieve the United States from South America: and this humanity travels, among the many many migration routes, that of Darién, a strip of land between Colombia and Panama, presided over by traffickers who, with their violent terror, have established an incendiary local weather for all those that dare to flee from the fireplace (paraphrase of some stunning verses by Juan Mosquera Restrepo).

The particular point out of the grasp award was acknowledged to Italian photojournalist Cinzia Canneri with a black and white mission among the many most attention-grabbing of the Festival. Women’s Bodies as Battlefields tells by pictures the struggles of Eritrean and Tigrayan girls of their resistance to rape as a weapon of struggle: these victims portrayed by Canneri transmit to us a way of resistance, dignity and actually intense energy. Living to battle (and preventing to dwell) is the abstract of a reportage from the martial arts gyms of Bangladesh, the place, within the shadow of Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., sport is rather more than a easy leisure or aggressive exercise: We Live to Fight, by Bangladeshi photographer Md Zobayer Hossain Joati, is the mission that received the scholar award part. Pro and towards Western Europe, twentieth-century and digitized, are in nearly equal elements the inhabitants of the previous Soviet republic of Moldova, portrayed by German photographer Julius Nieweler. Whispers say: ‘War is Coming’ is the mission that received the particular point out of the scholar award part and exhibits very nicely this social id suspended between opposing geopolitical aspirations and all the time within the midst of ‘voices saying that war is coming’.

The World Report Award additionally features a part devoted to the one shot, hosted at Banca Centropadana. The shattered human physique of thirty-six-year-old Ukrainian veteran Zakhar Biryukov, within the inconceivable but profitable act of embracing his personal son, and within the act of trying into our eyes by observing deeply the lens of Norwegian photographer Afshin Ismaeli, even with solely the attention that survived the struggle assault, is actually the one shoot worthy of the award. The struggle in Ukraine continues to be ongoing, however even when it had been hopefully over, the scars of the preventing would stay endlessly. The part is an efficient synthesis of crucial idea of the Festival: in thirty-two photographs, we see the good themes scroll earlier than our eyes, accompanied by unknown particular person tales however able to assuming common worth as nicely.

The Lives of Others is the part that investigates the connection between human beings and the locations they inhabit. Hosted at Palazzo Modignani, it consists of 4 initiatives that middle on women and men. Men are the fathers of the sequence entitled Becoming a Father, through which American photographer Adriana Zehbrauskas takes us to numerous elements of the world to enter the connection between fathers and new child kids. The first thousand days of the newborns strongly affect their well-being and progress and the photographer places us in entrance of the hygienically approximate wire of an African obstetrics ward and the gleaming IV tube of a Western ward. German photographer and documentarian Jana Margarete Schuler explores the sisterhood of Mexican girls residing in Ciudad Juarez, one of many world’s most harmful cities – particularly for ladies – and located on the border with Texas. Between Blood and Glitter exhibits us how, to defend themselves from violence, teams of ladies have organized themselves into lucha libre groups, a kind of boxing and wrestling through which maybe the violence is fiction whereas the violence on the road, sadly, is just not. Pier Paolo Pasolini would have preferred some pictures of the mission with the poetic title of Where Dust and Water Dream Together, by Tunisian Khlif Skander. In the sequence, the writer successfully explores the reference to the land, additionally recalling atmospheres traceable to Maria Lai, of a group residing in Tunisia in locations permeated by water and desert mud. David J Shaw as an alternative takes us to Caeadda (which can be the title of the mission), within the coronary heart of rural Wales, the place, amongst Ken Loach-like human figures and conventional bonds, the writer exhibits us how historical traditions, agriculture and livestock farming, can nonetheless be transmitted between completely different generations even within the coronary heart of the West.

NGO (or Non-Profit) Space is the part hosted at Chiostro dell’Ospedale Vecchio and, since its origins, has been characterised by highlighting small nice social tales strongly imbued with solidarity and concrete assist. This is of course the case with EMERGENCY which, among the many many areas the place it operates, has in Kurdistan a hospital specialised in making prostheses for amputated limbs. The Artisans of Prosthesis, by RAI photoreporter Giammarco Sicuro, is the mandatory photographic testimony of Hawzhin’s smile who, regardless of having misplaced a hand because of a mine, grew to become a seamstress due to a prosthesis and Satar, craftsman of this indispensable assist in his workshop the place the face of Gino Strada stands out. Roma Calcio is among the many predominant Italian soccer groups for the blind and the sequence by Lorenzo Foddai reveals its guidelines, however above all of the social environment that one breathes throughout a sporting occasion, exhibiting us the protagonists of ASD Roma Blind Football. Football Vibes is the title of a actuality that successfully is predicated on invisible and innumerable vibrations that strike the actions of the gamers on the sector. Freelance photographer Bente Stachowske permits us to know the Nyodeema Foundation, yet one more female-led actuality that helps work inclusion, on this case brave beekeepers. The braveness of those girls is each bodily as a result of the ladies problem typically harmful parts of nature, and social as a result of they work at evening difficult the prohibitions imposed by the social conventions of the Gambian villages the place the mission Beekeepers of Mosolula Gardino is about. Like In the Green Border by Agnieszka Holland, the Polish Karol Grygoruk permits us to enter the every day lifetime of the NGOs Minority Rights Group International and Grupa Granica that function on the border between Poland and Belarus in assist of migrants who, on the border between the European Union and territories outdoors the EU, hope to lastly discover relaxation of their very lengthy journey from the guts of Asia. As within the movie, however sadly with painfully actual connotations, the images of Borderlands present us the merciless clandestinity to which these human beings are obliged who use cell telephones and Google Maps as devices and compass of hope.

The one in Sudan is among the many, too many conflicts that bloody the world. Inside the nave of the sixteenth-century Church of Carmine, photojournalist Giles Clarke exhibits us its devastating results on the inhabitants with a mission entitled Sudan Under Siege and, as all the time within the face of wars lasting a few years, one can understand their results of ache within the many years to comply with. It is a dance with arctic wolves that’s staged on the Gardens Viale IV Novembre, the place Ronan Donovan exhibits us the animal delight in The Wolves of the High Arctic. The photographic sequence is just not solely social intelligence exhibited by these magnificent animals, but additionally an alert towards international warming that can be altering these habitats. Still lifes, objects of every day life and immense struggling is what’s on show on the Ex Cavallerizza, the place the thirtieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide is staged. The photographic mission curated by the VII Foundation within the type of a collective of assorted Balkan photojournalists. The gaze, the truth is, widens to all of the levels of the conflicts that bloodied the previous Yugoslavia, and Endgame: Yugoslavia. 30 Years for the reason that Genocide in Srebrenica places us in entrance of a vocabulary sadly current additionally in as we speak’s up to date world.

A dive into the territorial sphere is that of the Elegia lodigiana staged within the close by municipality of Montanaso Lombardo. The mission by Gabriele Cecconi immerses us in a rarefied sometimes Po Valley environment, apparently placid just like the Adda and the Po, however within the folds made of sunshine and shadow. We had maybe encountered the mega plastic dumps (virtually the entire planet), the chemical waste dumps, the digital tools dumps however, maybe, we had not but seen the immense dumps of trendy quick trend. The apocalyptic panorama of what we throw away, maybe after carrying it only some occasions, is earlier than our eyes, within the cloister of Palazzo della Provincia, due to the spectacular mission by photojournalist Magnus Wennman who arrives in Ghana to indicate us The Dark Side of Fast Fashion, the place the true panorama consists of mountains of “white people’s dead clothes”, as these merchandise are referred to as by native inhabitants. Fifteen years of World Report Award are on stage on the Chiesa dell’Angelo, the place actually all of the initiatives of this basic photographic competitors to witness the social historical past of the world scroll by. The must doc humanity is on stage, due to the one Lombard venue of the World Press Photo, within the premises of Fondazione Banca Popolare di Lodi, the place one enters the historical past of latest many years. Impossible to report right here the vastness of social, political, financial and particularly human points current on this abstract part: the one recommendation – which applies to nearly all the Festival – is to equip your self with loads of time, notebooks and psychological robustness to watch the infinite ache of a world actually in items.

Info:

LODI ETHICAL PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL
Open on weekends from September 27 to October 26, 2025 from 9:30 to twenty:00
10 venues in Lodi and one in Montanaso Lombardo
www.festivaldellafotografiaetica.it

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