Michele Smargiassi

Why do we laugh in photographs? Why do we laugh with photographs? Despite stuffy scholars doggedly denying the fact, comic photography exists. Great authors have practised it. In fact, photography has the best credentials for responding to the Freudian mechanism of the "joke". But photography is truly great when it crosses into the realm of the ridiculous, i.e. the comic that isn't aware that it's funny. Photography always shows us looking different from the way we think we look because it sees us the way we cannot see ourselves. All it takes is to shift the viewpoint by a few steps and tourists propping up the Tower of Pisa look like clumsy practitioners of the martial arts or fly-swatters. Photography is a fly with huge eyes, a horse-fly that observes and stings.

Michele Smargiassi has been involved in photography and visual culture for thirty years. In 2009 he created and now runs the blog Fotocrazia. In addition to texts for others' exhibitions, catalogues, magazines and books, he has also written Un’autentica bugia. La fotografia, il vero, il falso (Contrasto, 2009) and Ora che ci penso. La storia dimenticata delle cose quotidiane (Dalai, 2011). He is a member of board of the SISF, of the scholarly advisory board of the Centro italiano per la fotografia d’autore in Bibbiena and of the Fondazione Nino Migliori's scholarly advisory board.

Informazioni

Admission free while places last. Places for conversations, round tables and screenings will be assigned from one hour before the start of each event. Reservations may be made by membership card holders only. There will no further admission once the event has started.

Sala Cinema

Admission via steps in via Milano 9A