Silvia Camporesi. The Right Time and Place

One of the exhibitions inaugurating the new Centro della Fotografia di Roma, at Mattatoio/Città delle Arti, is dedicated to the photographic work of Silvia Camporesi, whose research has focused on the Italian landscape in recent years.

The title is inspired by Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), a cult classic steeped in mystery and temporal suspension, in which places become the absolute protagonists of a narrative without resolution. As in the film, time seems to stand still in Silvia Camporesi’s work, and space is charged with an enigmatic energy: her photos question what we see and what we think we know, inviting us to slow down our gaze and accept uncertainty as part of the experience. The places – real, altered, reconstructed or imagined – are never simple subjects but the visible outcome of a deeper process: the artist's journey, her physical and mental experience through geographical, historical and emotional territories.

The exhibition is promoted by Roma Capitale and Fondazione Mattatoio, organised by Civita Mostre e Musei and curated by Federica Muzzarelli. It is divided into five sections and brings together five fundamental series created over fifteen years of activity, which make up a poetic atlas in which photography becomes an instrument of knowledge, control and, at the same time, bewilderment: “La terza Venezia” (The Third Venice), “Journey to Armenia”, “Atlas Italiæ”, “Almanacco sentimentale” (Sentimental Almanac) and “Mirabilia”. These different but interconnected projects make up a story in images about memory, fragility and transformation, reminding us that, in photography as in reality, there are spaces and moments that defy explanation. The exhibition also includes “Omaggio al Mattatoio” (Homage to the Mattatoio - Slaughterhouse), a work that will become part of the newly created Photography Centre Archive.

Header: Omaggio al Mattatoio #03, 2025 © Silvia Camporesi