17/09/2024
Giorgio Garzella from Pisa won the first prize of the fourth edition by recounting, with an eloquent visual reportage, his artist residency on Mount Lagazuoi: his project will be exhibited together with those of Marialucia Campanella and Anna Dolci, who shared the same experience.
The award ceremony will take place on Saturday, 14th September. The exhibition dedicated to their works will then be inaugurated in the cultural centre at an altitude of almost 2,800 m and can be visited until the end of the season.
Cortina d'Ampezzo, 13th August 2024_Giorgio Garzella's landscape pictures and portraits, linked by a mysterious force, have hit the mark: The 29-year-old student at the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan is the winner of the fourth edition of the Lagazuoi Photo Award New Talents, an event curated by Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti.
"Close to the clouds, we swing like rocks" is the title of the project he developed during his artist residency on Mount Lagazuoi, which impressed the jury composed of Andrea Burla, official photographer of NiSi Italia, Stefania Di Bari, representative of the Marketing & Business Development Department of BPER Banca Private Cesare Ponti and Stefano Illing, creator of Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti.
Giorgio Garzella shared this adventure with Marialucia Campanella and Anna Dolci. Last July, the three of them spent five days at an altitude of over 2700 metres in symbiosis with the panorama, the hut keepers and the cable car staff, plunged into the "thundering" stillness of the mountains. They admired the peaks at sunrise and sunset and discovered the landscape and historical heritage.
The students were accompanied on this journey by three professional photographers who are members of Doc Creativity: Alessio Romeo, a photographer, speleologist and explorer, Damiano Andreotti, a professional photographer working mainly in the fields of portraiture, advertising and fashion, and Paolo Mazzo, a photographer specialising in architecture, industry and landscape, with a specific interest in urban areas.
As in 2023, three major Italian educational institutions were involved in the award: the Accademia Carrara di Bergamo, the Istituto Italiano di Fotografia di Milano and Officine Fotografiche di Roma. The artist residency resulted in three individual projects and a story shared on social media. The success of the initiative is an incentive to continue on this path and to prepare for the 2025 edition.
The Vernissage
The exhibition of the three projects will open on the morning of Saturday 14th September at the Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti, the highest exhibition venue in the Dolomites, at the top station of the Lagazuoi cable car. The same place that has been the home of the three young people for a week will now be the home of their creative visions. The programme includes the ribbon-cutting and awards ceremony in the presence of the residency protagonists: the students and their tutors.
On this occasion, NiSi Italia, a leader in the design and production of optical glass filters for cameras and filter mounts, will award a special prize.
The winning project_Giorgio Garzella: 'Close to the clouds, we swing like rocks'
Essentially, a landscape emerges from the interplay between a specific place and an observer, with human involvement assigning value to that particular location. This dynamic is prominently showcased in Giorgio Garzella's project.
He has created binomials by juxtaposing the details of a landscape of peculiar morphology with portraits of international visitors to Lagazuoi who come from all over the world. People and landscapes are the archetypes of each other. Sometimes, language barriers pose a challenge in grasping the true essence behind every gaze. At both the start and conclusion of the series, the images showcase the mountain's enchantment before and after the opening of the cable car, creating a suspended and suggestive temporal atmosphere.
This project aids in revitalizing the portrayal of mountains, going beyond worn-out stereotypes and encouraging a different aesthetic sensibility. The top award was granted because of the balance evident in all compositions, the originality in intertwining the human and mineral domains, the adept combination of sensitivity, emotion, and technical proficiency, and the awareness expressed by the project as a cohesive whole.
Marialucia Campanella: New Horizons
Marialucia Campanella is 29 years old, comes from Apulia and completed a two-year course at the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan. It was her first experience of being in the mountains. Here, the flat line of the sea horizon, a constant point of reference for those who, like her, grew up on the coast, has been transformed into the profile of the mountains. Peaks that always hide other peaks, create a constant tension in the view. The images are accompanied by sound: the wind brings voices, the sound of breathing and footsteps, the chirping of birds... life at high altitudes. This extreme setting engages with memories of the sea, depicted and documented through a juxtaposition of differences that prompt viewers to explore the interplay between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The author also appears and presents herself as a tiny person, immersed among the great rocky reefs, to capture the sense of wonder that flows through her, immersed in a panorama as infinite as the sea.
Anna Dolci: Rituals and Imprints of Place
Anna Dolci, from the Imagna Valley in the mountains of Bergamo, is the youngest of the three participants. She is 20 years old and will be starting her third year at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bergamo in the autumn, where she is studying Fine Arts. This photo project investigates the gestures of people in the mountains, both workers and tourists. Rituals mark the day and give it meaning, especially in a place as unusual as Mount Lagazuoi: they almost imperceptibly enrich the time of people who put themselves at the centre and express their passion through small actions: tying their boots, stretching or eating breakfast, hanging out socks to dry, tying their hair. During the development of her project, Anna Dolci interacted with many people who often discovered their rituals with her, as if they were looking at them from the outside for the first time. It is an enriching exchange, both inside and outside the picture frame, that looks like a family album.
