Cortona On The Move 2019

COTM 2019
ARTISTIC DIRECTION STATEMENT

curated by Arianna Rinaldo

Landscape, nature, territory are integral parts of the history of humanity. They speak about us, who we are, what we want. Our surrounding environment reflects our thoughts and our actions, good and evil.

Landscape photography reveals and interprets our desires, our intentions and our beliefs, because nature and environment mirror the evolution of mankind, the inevitable and the evitable, progress and error.

In its broadest sense, landscape shows man’s relation with the surroundings; a relationship that is difficult but familiar to us, contrasted and desired. We leave traces, we hide them, they resurface. Consciously and unconsciously, we feel part of nature; we love it and abuse it.

The landscape is our world, our home. We belong to the places we have seen and known. We possess them, we love them, we seek them, we escape them. Our memory and our gestures become intrinsically linked to the spaces we inhabit. Every place becomes a symbol. It represents our belonging, our being there. In its broadest and most comprehensive meaning, natural and urban, we are the environments we inhabit.

The 2019 edition of Cortona On The Move follows the intention of the festival to be a space for reflection and visual discourse on the world we live in. This year’s focus takes shape around the relationship between humans and landscape. Nature and environment are key words nowadays. The land is a central element in human life, both in the realm of urgent ecological issues that need to be solved, and in relation to the world’s social and economic situation.

In this edition, by means of contemporary documentary photography, and under the artistic direction of Arianna Rinaldo, the works on show reveal and interpret today’s relationship between humans and their surroundings. Such a complex, multifaceted relation questions us on our present, our future and our past.

Humankind’s history is traced in the landscape; nature is marked by it, often wounded; the land shows signs of belonging and passage. The environment, for better or for worse, records humanity’s action and becomes a witness of history.