photography-award

2024 Edition

The fifth edition of Tosetti Value Photography Award was assigned to Rossella Biscotti. “The piece unanimously selected by the jury is the only existing image of the culminating moment of the project The Journey, on which the artist has worked over a long time span. The Journey stems from the prize received in 2010 at the International Carrara Biennale, consisting of a large block of marble taken from the Cava Michelangelo, the quarry utilized in the Renaissance, while the artist was working on the Mediterranean as a cultural, geopolitical and physical space, starting from her research at Lampedusa.

Over the years, continuing her focus on the Mediterranean, Rossella Biscotti decided to program a performative action in which a ship would travel the sea to find the perfect spot at which to allow the block of stone to slide into the water and settle on the seabed. The image captures the moment in which after months of navigation the 20-ton block was released, slipping off the deck of the ship at the point in which the African tectonic plate touches that of Europe. The artist has made The Journey by weaving a complex web of stories, relationships, alliances and geopolitical meanings, taking form in a series of multidisciplinary elements producing a sound installation, images, sculptures, an experimental film and performance. The work presented at Artissima, the only shot of this culminating moment, impressed the jurors with its intensity, the stratification of political, economic and historical viewpoints, and the capacity to prompt viewers to make their own critical assessment. The Mediterranean, from its geological physicality to its reality as a territory crossed by routes of migration, repression, as well as exploitation of marine resources, is the theatre of a poetic gesture in which the image politically encounters the performative dimension”.

Jury

1. Walter Guadagnini, Director, CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Turin
2. Lucrezia Cippitelli, Co-Director contemporary art programme, Kunst Meran, Merano
3. Lorenzo Vitturi, artist

Photo courtesy: © Perottino-Piva-Peirone / Artissima