Photography

In your twenties, the future is infinite... but complicated

The 20th edition of Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia dedicates its exhibitions to the Generation and its challenges and languages

by Veronica Constance Ward

1 May 2025

3' min read

Being twenty is wonderful. Being twenty is difficult. Today more than ever, in an era of convulsive, tightening changes with consequences that are difficult to predict, young people are and feel both powerful and lost, armed but inadequate.

Sustainability, politics, identity, equality, the future, but also image, wealth and the physiological desire for carefreeness, twenty-somethings are under sprawling and layered pressure.

In this edition, Fotografia Europea focused on the protagonists of the future, the young people of different eras, their realities and perspectives, their contradictions now exacerbated by the demands of new technologies, new languages, and national and international crises. By tracing the path of Generation Z through the eyes of great photographers and young newcomers, artistic directors Tim Clark, Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart offer an immediate and powerful key to understanding.

It starts at the Cloisters of San Pietro in Reggio Emilia, which once again become the artistic centre of the city thanks to ten exhibitions exploring the theme of this edition.

Fotografia europea a Reggio Emilia
Photogallery11 foto

Daido Moriyama

Among them, the seven rooms on the ground floor host Daido Moriyama: A retrospective, a retrospective of the Japanese photographer during his sixty years of activity, spent documenting and exploring post-war Japanese society.

A living legend of photography and pioneer of street photography, the Japanese artist arrives at Fotografia Europea, the only stop in Italy, with an exhibition that offers a unique and complete perspective of his work. From the iconic shots of his early years as a photojournalist, in which he recounts the gap created following the military occupation of Japan by the United States, between the ancient Japanese tradition and accelerated westernisation, to the images of the last two decades, seemingly more sentimental, even commercial and aesthetic, in which Moriyama works closely with editors and designers on photo books, magazines and large-scale installations.

Andy Sewell

On the first floor, British photographer Andy Sewell presents for the first time his project Slowly and Then All at Once, which explores various forms of power and protest through a sequence of images across several panels, many focusing on the theme of climate change.

Powerful is the invisible protest of You don't die, an exhibition by Ghazal Golshiri and Marie Sumalla - respectively an Iranian journalist and the French photo editor of the daily newspaper Le Monde - which recounts, through photographs by anonymous web and social media authors, the historic uprising of the Iranian people, which broke out after the tragic death of the young 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022, due to the violence she suffered after being arrested by the moral police for her clothing offensive to the regime.

More activist photography in the large central corridor, on the first floor of the Cloisters, with Swiss-French photographer Thaddé Comar's How Was Your Dream? an exhibition that explores the new forms of demonstration and insurrection in the post-contemporary era dominated by increasingly modern and ubiquitous methods of social control and surveillance and, in the case of the Hong Kong protesters against the Beijing regime, by equally ingenious techniques of protecting one's identity with masks, goggles and other accessories (recall the Umbrella Movement of 2014). Singular identity vanishes in favour of a collective individuality that fights united.

The mystery behind the lens. Kido Mafon, an alias of an Instagram artist, captures Tokyo's frenetic nightlife and youth culture in IFUCKTOKYO - DUAL MAIN CHARACTER in his first exhibition. Using a Contax G1 and shooting on film, Mafon explores the city after dark to document the vibrant and free nights of this eclectic metropolis that only comes together again at dawn.

Many other exhibitions and venues can be visited until 8 June. For the complete programme of official exhibitions and the OFF circuit: https://www.fotografiaeuropea.it

To be twenty, European Photography 2025, curated by Tim Clark, Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart, Chiostri di San Pietro, Palazzo da Mosto, Palazzo dei Musei, Biblioteca Panizzi, Spazio Gerra, Reggio Emilia, until 8 June 2025