FRANCESCO ZIZOLA
Mare Omnis

«Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see» (Roland Barthes).

Behind any image there is something original that we recognize and contemplate, or we could also say that the images already exist, and it is only up to us to free them.

Mare Omnis recalls something distant and ancestral, forms that lead to distant worlds. The topic is the relationship of man and nature and his influence on the sea: drawings, human figures, ancient representations, signs in the night, distant images of powerful nature in close contact with the human. The photos are silent, essential, slow, linked to dreams and memory.

These signs are actually fishing nets inserted in the great Mediterranean Sea. They are nets that the tonnarotti – those who take care of the tuna fishing – install to catch the tuna in their migration towards the coast.

Zizola chooses to move away from the classic narrative topoi of reportage towards a poetic and abstract language, extremely ambiguous. What do we really look at when we see an image? What do our eyes recognize? These are the questions we ask ourselves while looking at the photographs of Mare Omnis, the latest work by Zizola started in 2016, which describes the now overturned and lost relationship of man with the sea.

(text by Claudia Corrent)

BIO

Francesco Zizola (Rome, 1962) has photographed the main crises and conflicts that have occurred in the world for over thirty years. 

He has received numerous awards, including ten World Press Photo and six Picture of the Year International.

In 2003 Henri Cartier Bresson included one of his photographs among his 100 favorites. This collection was turned into an exhibition – Les Choix d’Henry Cartier Bresson- and a book. He has published Mare Omnis (Foto-Forum edizioni), Aguanta (Ediuni edizioni), Sale Sudore Sangue (Postcart), Uno sguardo inadeguato (Fiaf 2013), Iraq (Ega) e Born Somewhere (Delpire).

He made a short film that won the 2018 SIAE award for “creative talent” as part of the Venice Biennale, Film Festival.

He has founded the collective Noor images. He is Nikon Ambassador and Master for Nikon Noor Masterclass program in different countries and continents.

He is the artistic director of the World Press Photo exhibition in Rome and Ferrara since 2016. He has been appointed as curator of the project Collezione Roma 2020-21-22 for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome Palazzo delle Esposizioni.

He is the artistic director of the gallery 10b photography in Rome.