Filippo Venturi Photography | Blog

Filippo Venturi is a documentary photographer and a visual artist based in Italy.
He produces personal projects concerning identity and the human condition.

He has documented totalitarian dictatorships in Asia, highlighting in his work the artificiality with which these countries display and narrate themselves to the world, and has witnessed neo-fascist currents in Europe and the movements that, in response, fight to protect minority rights and democracy.

His works have been published in leading international magazines, such as National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Newsweek, Geo, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Stern, Internazionale, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera and La Stampa.

For the past years he has been engaged in a project on the Korean peninsula, earning him the Sony World Photography award, the LensCulture Emerging Talent Award, the Il Reportage Award, the Voglino Award and the Portfolio Italia – Grand Prix Hasselblad.

His works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad in exhibition spaces and festivals like Foro Boario in Modena as “New Talent” of the Modena Photography Foundation, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Somerset House in London, U Space in Beijing, Willy Brandt Haus in Berlin, Sony Square in New York City, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Kaunas Photo Festival, Voies Off Awards at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Photolux in Lucca, SI Fest in Savignano sul Rubicone, Riaperture Photofestival in Ferrara, PhMuseum Days Photo Festival in Bologna and Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi.

He teaches photojournalism and documentary photography. His workshops and public talks have been hosted at the University of Padova (within the History of Journalism course), Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (Radio Ca’ Foscari), the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, the Free Academy of Fine Arts of Rimini, the Malatestiana Library in Cesena as well as in various photography festivals (Copenhagen Photo Festival, Riaperture Photofestival, Biennale of Female Photography of Mantua, etc), European projects (Reconstruction of Identities, European Shaping Fair Cities project, Erasmus+ Photography for Future, etc) and cultural associations.

He has been member of the jury in several prestigious awards like the Marco Pesaresi Award for Contemporary Photography, the Annual Photography Awards and the Malatesta Short Film Festival.

• In 2017 he was the Reporter sent to North Korea by Vanity Fair Italia Magazine.
• In 2018 he was the Fujifilm Testimonial in the FIAF Project “The Family in Italy”.
• In 2019 he was selected by SI Fest, the Photography Festival of Savignano sul Rubicone, to participate in the IDE Project – Reconstruction of Identities, funded by the European Union, which involves realities such as the Copenhagen Photo Festival, AD HOC Gestion Cultural SL and NOOR Foundation. He also led the “Regeneration lines” photographic workshop of the Creative Living Lab project by Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
• In 2020 he produced several works on Covid-19 which have been published all over the world.
• In 2021 he led the “My Dear” photographic workshop of the European Shaping Fair Cities project, which involved twenty women of nine different nationalities with the aim of pursuing Goal 5 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. He also led the “Citizen Lab” photographic workshop, which involved fifty high school students, with the aim of stimulating their consideration and creativity about their relationship with the institutions, carrying out small documentation projects of the period of the electoral campaign and administrative elections.
• In 2022 his work “Foundations of a mirage” was nominated for the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
• In 2023 he began working with text-to-image artificial intelligence software, creating the project “Broken Mirror,” which was a finalist for the PhMuseum Photography Grant and the Cortona On The Move Award, and a prizewinner at the Kolga Tbilisi Photo Awards and the Fotografia Calabria Festival. He was one of the artists selected by the PhotoVogue Festival, an event where he was also a speaker with a speech entitled ‘Broken Mirror. A dystopian guide to crossing the border”.

«All images are very rigorous and refined, nothing appears “too much” or “too little”. Surprise, light irony and never sarcasm. Amazement, curiosity and never preconception. “The photographer’s eye” is precise, it asks questions, explores, learns and gives us beautiful images where everything is balanced and bloody well set in the right place at the right time. An unsettling elegance, from which so many famous authors could learn. But what is most striking is the ability and willingness of the author to talk about modern man and his own illnesses. Like the best contemporary art. The anthropological, precise and timely study, which accompanies each image, provides ideas for universal reflection on who we are and where we are going. For this reason, this work goes beyond the “reportage” and genre photography, arousing universal, truly anthropological interest.»
– Davide Grossi about Filippo Venturi’s Photography

Contacts

Web: www.filippoventuri.photography
Email: filippo.venturi@gmail.com