REGGIO EMILIA.- From 30 April to 14 June 2026, Reggio Emilia will once again look at contemporary changes through the eyes of leading photographers and emerging talents with the 21st edition of Fotografia Europea, the festival promoted and organised by Fondazione Palazzo Magnani and the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region.
“Ghosts of the Moment” is the theme chosen by the Festival curators: Arianna Catania (founder and director of Gibellina Photoroad / Open Air & Site-specific Festival), Tim Clark (editor and curator at 1000 Words) and Luce Lebart (researcher at the Archive of Modern Conflict and artistic director of the Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier). In addition, there is a historical overview by Walter Guadagnini (photography historian and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna) dedicated to 200 years of photography.
The “ghosts” we will meet and take on are the shadows of something that has lost its body, yet keeps knocking at the night of the mind. These ghosts are not just apparitions, but memories that refuse to be consigned to the past, fears dressed as mystery and presences made entirely of absence. They dwell in the corridors of silence, live in the cracks of memory and feed on what was left unsaid. When they manifest, at times they make us tremble; at others they shield us into forgetting. They have no face, only a thousand masks. You can drive them off with the light of an idea, or listen to them to learn what they hunger for. Yet ghosts are not only a menace, they are latent presences, suspended potentials, ideas that never quite departed. This edition of Fotografia Europea is an invitation to seek out the unseen and the invisible, paying attention to the whispers of what has been and what could be. The featured artists reveal the silent stories that inform and guide our present while simultaneously opening up new paths for the imagination. The Festival explores the quiet endurance of memory – how memories fade and yet refuse to vanish entirely. Each photograph holds its own echo, a spectral reminder that even as time slips away, it keeps its essence suspended. In these exhibitions, the past is not gone, it breathes softly within the now.
For two centuries, photography has captured shadows, preserved faces and constructed collective memories, moving among these ghosts. The second part of this journey will delve into its history, examining how images have accompanied, interpreted and sometimes reinvented the lives of men and women from the 19th century to the present day.
It is here that our dialogue with the “ghosts” takes shape, traversing archives, authors and technologies that have shaped the way we see, perceive and understand the world around us.
