Vogue Photo Festival 2020: Milan

30 October - 22 November 2020

Due to the uncertainty of social distancing measures and the general Covid—19 situation the fifth edition of the Photo Vogue Festival, organised by Vogue Italia will be mainly digital. A never seen before platform will host the exhibitions, talks and projections. 

 

Excerpts of the exhibitions will also be displayed outdoors from October 30th until November 22nd, in the Giardini di Porta Venezia in Milan, to allow the community to interact with the works. The full exhibitions will be browsable online starting November 12, and the live events, talks, zoom parties and portfolio reviews will populate the same platform from the 19th to the 22nd of November 2020

As every edition, the Festival will be a unique opportunity for those interested in photography, fashion and art to come into contact with a showcase of innovative photography and industry leaders, from curators to practitioners. 

 

"All in this together" displays works by 30 photographers that are a hymn to love and hope, an encouragement to nurture and keep alive the sense of community, of solidarity and empathy that we all witnessed as the offset of a very dramatic moment in time, with Covid—19 spreading beyond borders and barriers. 
 

The true significance of the term ‘community’, the real meaning of what defines our humanity, maybe is to be found in the notes of a Milanese trumpet player playing “O mia bèla Madunina” (the unofficial anthem of the city of Milan) from his Milanese home window in the unlikely silence of the streets void of any traffic during the lockdown. When everything seems to crumble and nothing appears to make sense anymore, only the total and absolute gratuity of art, its being resistant to any tangible usefulness, its nature being so tragically fleeting and extemporaneous can help us recover the sense of life through the catastrophic and help us “riveder le stelle” (gaze at the stars again). At the heart of this miracle lies another word that belongs to the lexicon of the Communitas – gift. After all, this is what this trumpet player’s music is all about: a gift. Not a tangible object or something that changes anything of the current reality, of the threat that looms upon us or the anguish that has taken hold of us. Yet, a gift like this one, which deserves being called a gift of love – what is love if not a gift, after all? – not in spite of but rather thanks to its gratuity and fragility is the only thing that can transform interpersonal relations, distract people from their isolation to allow them to meet again in another space where loneliness is replaced by the Communitas. It may seem like nothing but it is everything.

 

This exhibition features 30 photographers selected through the scouting initiative launched on PhotoVogue, the photographic platform of Vogue.it. The works have been selected by an internationally jury consisting of experts from across the world, with different backgrounds and vision so as to try to provide the most inclusive and multifaceted perspective.