Come il vento

Photography of the places

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Colonia

9th February – 3rd July 2026

Opening: 6th February, 7pm

Curated by Ralph Goertz

The exhibition ‘Come il vento’ was created in reference to ‘No Place like Home. Italian Photography since the 1980s’, the largest survey exhibition of Italian photography since ‘Viaggio in Italia’ in 1984. It presents around 60 works by 10 Italian photographers who have explored the medium of photography in their own individual ways and who have a special relationship with Guido Guidi, one of the most important representatives of new Italian photography.

Alessandra Dragoni, LIBERA POESIA, 2023

‘Come il vento’ examines the so-called ‘photography of the places’, which Guido Guidi, together with Luigi Ghirri, Gabriele Basilico, and Olivo Barbieri, established as a new artistic development in Italian photography since the late 1970s. This approach has been reinterpreted by subsequent generations. In ‘photography of places,’ photographers focused their work on viewing photography as a reproduction of the material objects that define the spaces inhabited by people.

With ‘photography of places,’ these photographers attempted to create a special feeling of belonging and closeness to their own territory, especially to the areas between city and countryside. For these artists, photography is therefore less a means of visual representation and more a focus on the spaces in which people's lives actually take place.

Luca Nostri, Piazza Baracca, looking east from the hanging garden, Lugo, 2020

The photographers featured here share a spiritual and sensual engagement with place as collective memory. Although there was no unified school of photography at any art academy in Italy, most of the artists featured here studied under Guido Guidi at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Ravenna or the University of Venice. In their clear visual language, which plays with the visual strategy of documentary photography, they create impressive works full of poetry and reflection, far removed from all the clichés of ‘Dolce Vita’ and ‘Bella Italia’.

Guido Guidi, Ina casa, 1999

Participating photographers:

Carmen Colombo, Matteo Di Giovanni, Alessandra Dragoni, Cesare Fabbri, Marcello Galvani, Guido Guidi, Francesca Iovene, Allegra Martin, Francesco Neri and Luca Nostri.