Theme of the 2023 edition of Young Italian Photography | Luigi Ghirri Award
Can visual culture and photographic images lead us to reimagine the concept of identity, and open up our perspective into new ways of how we understand the concept of belonging?
As Aristoteles famously stated, the sense of belonging is a fundamental need for human beings as “social animals”. This is a natural instinct; if this was not the case, there would be no connection at all. Nevertheless, several phenomena of the last generation (from the digital revolution to telecommunications, migration and scientific progress) are challenging the relationship and social structures we were used to. Now more than ever, tension arises among different perceptions of what belonging is: on one side the inclusion in a community whose identity is well defined, which can sometimes react with oppression or resistance, on the other side there can be a liberal tension towards new forms of community based on shared values, such as micro-communities, that are the core of “achievable utopias”, or the creation of cultural areas on a much larger scale, Europe being one, possibly reaching new global concepts like Martha Nussbaum’s theory about species membership, or like the holistic view on nature, without forgetting those relationships that are more intimate in nature.
Photography and visual culture are contributing in a meaningful way to shape our ideas of identity and belonging, by defining who is in, and who is out. Indian author Amitav Ghosh has been inviting us to a change of paradigm for years now, placing in the center of his storytelling what is usually left out, weaving stories that start from nature’s point of view – spices, plants, animals, volcanoes – or people who know nature, like shamans, to remind us that a new balance can only be achieved through counter-storytelling.
Is visual culture in the position of making us imagine a new concept of identity? Can it show what happens in the subtle space between belonging and being allowed in, or in the large and unstable space that runs between social determinism and individual freedom? Our contemporary life is characterized by a mix of different kinds of images – shot through traditional devices, generated by individuals or machines and then possibly shared on social network. Can this combination generate a change of vision, disrupting official narratives, opening up a perspective into new ways of understanding how we belong to a larger and more complex system?
(Ilaria Campioli, Daniele De Luigi)