The Photo Solstice returns in 2025 for its seventh edition, choosing the island of Culuccia as the new setting for its journey into contemporary photography. Launched in 2018 on the island of Asinara, the project has travelled across Sardinia over the years, transforming each time into a collective laboratory of gazes, talks, and exhibitions — where photography becomes a tool for observing and narrating the landscape.
Curated by Marco Delogu and promoted by AR/S – Arte Condivisa, the contemporary art platform of Fondazione di Sardegna, The Photo Solstice VII will take place from June 18 to 22, 2025, and will center around a workshop for ten photographers selected through an international open call, led by artist and professor Matthew Connors.
The workshop, titled The Ordering of Intensities, will focus on the development of intentionally directed photographic projects. Each participant will be invited to create work in direct response to the island’s unique terrain, within a setting that alternates between fieldwork, collective feedback, editing exercises, critical dialogue, readings, and project development. Particular attention will be devoted to the photobook as a creative form, using narrative strategies drawn from literature and cinema. The entire workshop will be held in English.
The island of Culuccia, where the workshop will take place, is a strip of land suspended between the sea, Mediterranean maquis, and ancient silence. Located in northern Sardinia between Santa Teresa and Palau, the island has been transformed by Turin-based entrepreneur Marco Boglione into a project of environmental and agricultural regeneration. Today, it offers one of the most striking and unspoiled landscapes in the Mediterranean—home to 18th-century rural dwellings, wild vegetation, free-roaming animals, and an untouched coastline.
Within this unique setting, participants will be invited to engage their vision with the landscape, working on the concept of visual intensity, the book form, and photographic storytelling, following Connors’ proposed method.
The open call is open until June 1, 2025, and welcomes photographers of all ages and backgrounds. To apply, candidates are asked to submit a portfolio of 10–20 images, a brief presentation text in English, and a short curriculum vitae.
Programma
T R A C E S di Vanessa Winship e George Georgiou
21.06 – 30.09.2024
Il programma multidisciplinare di talk, lecture, eventi aperti al pubblico e workshop della sesta edizione di The Photo Solstice, che si terrà a Cagliari venerdì 21 e sabato 22 giugno, include anche la mostra Traces di George Georgiou e Vanessa Winship, a cura di Marco Delogu e dedicata alla costa occidentale e alle aree interne della Sardegna.
Il progetto Traces è l’esito di un’esperienza di residenza e produzione fotografica sul territorio sardo, promossa dalla Fondazione di Sardegna e che rientra nel programma di AR/S – Arte Condivisa “Commissione Sardegna”, che negli anni ha portato sull’isola i fotografi Marco Delogu, Guy Tillim, Pino Musi, Paolo Ventura, Tim Davis e Olivo Barbieri, sostenendone la ricerca e producendo le opere.
Dalla fine degli anni Novanta, il duo Georgiou – Winship lavora congiuntamente a progetti a lungo termine su ritratti, paesaggi, reportage e fotografia documentaria, nell’Europa orientale e negli Stati Uniti.
Dopo aver vagabondato insieme a George Georgiou per circa dieci anni (dal 1999) nei Balcani, in Turchia e nei territori del Mar Nero, vivendoci e realizzando lavori che hanno incontrato il consenso di pubblico e critica, Vanessa Winship raggiunge il meritato successo con una serie di ritratti realizzati in Anatolia dal titolo Sweet Nothings (2007), un progetto che rappresenta una svolta fondamentale nell’approccio formale della fotografa britannica: abbandona la fotografia intimista e di reportage in 35mm e passa al ritratto in banco ottico, quindi ad una fotografia ancor più lenta e riflessiva, che le vale un primo premio al World Press Photo nella sezione ritratto, il Photographer of the Year ai Sony World Photography Awards, il National Portrait Gallery Prize e infine l’Henri Cartier-Bresson Award.
Il workshop
MATTHEW CONNORS
The Ordering of Intensities
Photo by Claudia Gori
Is an artist whose commitment to the medium of photography has been propelled by the revelatory potential of the public sphere. Rooted in specific currents of history, his bodies of work create a new visual encyclopedia of forms, portraits, symbols, and residues that emerge from protest movements, war, and oppressive systems of governance. His lyrical yet methodical approach resonates with political documentary and street photography, but continually challenges and transforms these categories.
His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. His first mon ograph Fire in Cairo (SPBH Editions, 2015) was awarded the ICP Infinity Award for best artist book in 2016. He was also awarded the 2024 Abigail Cohen Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, a Headlands Center for the Arts Residency, two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, the Lightwork Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. Connors earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Photography from Yale University. He has taught in the Image Text Ithaca MFA Program, the Yale University MFA Program, and in the Photography Department at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design where he has been a professor since 2004
CULUCCIA ISLAND
Is located in northern Sardinia, between Santa Teresa and Palau, facing the Strait of Bonifacio. For over seventy years, it was inhabited by a single man, Angelo Sanna—known locally as Ziu Agnuleddu—who lived in isolation, raising animals, cultivating native grapevines, and firmly resisting any attempt at tourist development. After his death in 1996, the island was donated to the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) and, after a period of transition, was acquired in 2017 by the Turin-based entrepreneur Marco Boglione.
Today, Culuccia is a protected and environmentally regulated area, the subject of an ambitious agricultural and landscape regeneration project that respects the island’s history and morphology. The restoration of stazzi (traditional rural dwellings), the reopening of original footpaths, the focus on biodiversity, and the sustainable use of resources make this island an exceptional vantage point for reimagining the relationship between nature, memory, and transformation.
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