Four students of the Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara di Bergamo had the opportunity to spend six days exploring the breathtaking landscape of Mount Lagazuoi searching for the true essence of the Dolomites. The project represents the metamorphosis of the Lagazuoi Photo Awards competition, completely renewed this year with the "New Talents" formula: the focus shifts to young people and thus to a new gaze.
The award ceremony for the winner, Beniamino Sciabica, and the opening of the exhibition dedicated to the submitted works, which can be admired at the Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti until the end of October, are scheduled for 2nd September.
Four budding talents, six days spent at almost 3000 meters above sea level and a quality jury ready to crown the winner: this is the new format of the Lagazuoi Photo Award, the first curatorial project of Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti, the high-tech exhibition and museum centre located at the top station of the Lagazuoi cable car between Cortina d'Ampezzo and Alta Badia.
“The Lagazuoi Photo Award was created in 2020 to dispel any cliche of a mostly backwards-looking iconography of the mountains, which too often looks backwards, while these territories are carriers of innovation and future,” explains Stefano Illing, engineer and creator of the cultural centre. "This year, with the Lagazuoi Photo Award - New Talents, we want to look even further ahead and that is why we cater to young people: we are making room for them because they will sow the seeds of an aesthetic and cultural revolution."
Thanks to the partnership with the Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara di Bergamo, the competition is completely renewed, is aimed at young talents and opens to other artistic forms: now, beyond photography, it also includes videos and sounds. Four academy students were selected by means of a tender and had the opportunity to undergo a unique experience on the top of Mount Lagazuoi: six field days walking in the midst of 250-million-year-old rocks through an extreme, sometimes almost lunar landscape. If it's true that observing a place with new eyes is like discovering it for the first time, these "discoverers" have seen the Dolomites like no one has seen them before. Positioned to capture the light of sunset and sunrise, sometimes they had to face extreme conditions, but above all they slowly assimilated the beauty of the place, getting in tune with the peaks. Their projects bear witness to this unprecedented learning and immersion process.
The submitted works have been evaluated by a highly qualified jury made up of professionals and experts: Elisabetta Lattanzio Illy, photographer and journalist, CEO and founder of the Photo Agency Picture of Change, Francesco Pedrini, director of the art academy Accademia di Belle Arti G. Carrara in Bergamo, Leonie Radine, curator of the Museion in Bolzano, Stefano Illing, creator of the Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti, Elisa Calcamuggi, Marketing Manager of the DMO Dolomiti.
And the winner of this edition is Beniamino Sciabica, awarded for his video "2752 metres above sea level", that proves his excellent talent for audiovisual composition, in which he poetically, aesthetically and ironically expresses some contradictory aspects of the perception of the high mountains. The presence of people, architecture, history and technology are a counterpoint to the impressive and wonderful nature of these places. The portrait of a natural experience is the simplest definition of "landscape".
According to the jurors, the young winner managed to show the complexity and the ambiguity in the tangle of man, nature and technology in the mountain landscape as well as the parallel realities of tourism and work, leisure and business.
Capturing both the silence or the subtle melodies of nature and the noise of restaurants and cable cars, which create a dynamic rhythm of the mountain with all its different temporalities and speeds. The quality of the photography is partly spectacular and highly professional, and then very enigmatic, banal or deliberately amateurish, capturing different perspectives and creating a visual and auditory landscape that is rich and complex in harmonies and dissonances.
The award ceremony and the opening of the exhibition are scheduled for 2nd September 2022 at 3 p.m. at the Lagazuoi EXPO Dolomiti followed by a toast in the new Lagazuoi Terrace Bar by Embassy.
Development and coordination of special projects Lagazuoi Expo Dolomiti and DOC-COM Press Office
