The exhibition Scrittura Obliqua – Photography and Poetry is curated by Matteo Balduzzi. The Scientific Committee of the project and exhibition includes Davide Rondoni, Matteo Balduzzi, Corrado Benigni, Gabriella Guerci, Michele Nastasi, Giorgio Zanchetti, and Mauro Zanchi.
This exhibition project explores the possible relationships between photography and poetry, through the work of seven artists active on the contemporary scene: Luca Campigotto, Federico Clavarino, Sabrina D’Alessandro, Linda Fregni Nagler, Alessandro Sambini, Alessandra Spranzi, and Paolo Ventura.

The research that led to the exhibition began in September 2023, when a working group – including Davide Rondoni, Matteo Balduzzi, Corrado Benigni, Gabriella Guerci, Silvia Mazzucchelli, Giorgio Zanchetti, and with the generous and enthusiastic participation of Giovanni Chiaramonte – gathered in the Museum’s library to reflect on the possibility of bringing together two seemingly distant languages: photography, often seen as an objective and direct reflection of reality, and poetry, as the purest and most intimate expression of subjectivity. From this dialogue arose the desire to explore, through artistic practice, the tensions and short circuits that emerge in the encounter between image and word.

The theme is analyzed starting from significant examples in the history of American photography, where this connection has been evident since the medium’s origins — in authors such as Herman Melville and Carleton Watkins in the 19th century, Walt Whitman and Edward Weston in the early 20th century, and later in the postwar Beat Generation, with figures such as Jack Kerouac, Robert Frank, and Minor White.

In Italy, the exhibition recalls the work of Ugo Mulas, dedicated to the equally monumental figure of Eugenio Montale, particularly his collection Ossi di seppia. A central role is also played by Mario Giacomelli, who throughout his career drew inspiration from poetry, engaging directly with poets and verses by Giacomo Leopardi, Cesare Pavese, Mario Luzi, Francesco Permunian, Sergio Corazzini, Vincenzo Cardarelli, David Maria Turoldo, as well as Edgar Lee Masters, Emily Dickinson, and Jorge Luis Borges. Other Italian photographers who maintained a close relationship with poetry are also referenced: Franco Vaccari, with his early experiments in visual poetry; Luigi Ghirri, whose everyday poetics often bordered on the literary; Giovanni Gastel and Giovanni Chiaramonte, who both cultivated a personal and professional bond with poetic language; and Giulia Niccolai, who embraced and embodied both disciplines.

From this initial encounter emerged the will to listen to the voices of the artists themselves, adopting a working method that has characterized the institution since its founding — that of public commissions as a form of dialogue with authors and support for experimentation.

The project’s Scientific Committee selected seven artists – Luca Campigotto, Federico Clavarino, Sabrina D’Alessandro, Linda Fregni Nagler, Alessandro Sambini, Alessandra Spranzi, and Paolo Ventura – based on their profound interest in writing in general and poetic language in particular, evident in both their artistic and personal paths. Supported by the Strategia Fotografia 2024 program, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Museum invited them to produce new and entirely original worksexploring the intersections between photography and poetry.

“It is the inevitable fate of an art so deeply tied to technological possibilities to constantly question itself. This questioning, however, cannot take place through sterile self-analysis or by closing in on itself, but rather through fertile, dramatic, wounded, and joyful confrontation with other forms of art. To these encounters, partnerships, and creations, the National Museum of Photography that I have the honor of presiding over will give space — beginning with poetry.”
— Davide Rondoni, President of the National Museum of Photography

The seven selected artists — differing in generation, language, and practice — began their projects in September 2024, developing entirely new research paths or expanding trajectories already underway. Whether approaching the theme strictly or intuitively, each has visually explored an idea — not necessarily of poetry in the strict sense, but of word, text, sign, writing, translation, and transcription.

The result is a constellation of profoundly diverse works, united by a shared intimacy — a dimension of reflection and interiority that does not necessarily emphasize autobiography, but rather expands into a collective and resonant sensibility.

Each of the seven projects engages with matter, writing, and time, revealing the encounter between vision and language, text and image.

Luca Campigotto – La vita nascosta, 1995–2025

Campigotto has long worked on a book combining his own photographs and poems, created over years of travel. While the images have become fixed icons over time, the writing has evolved, reflecting his inner transformations. The project becomes a stream of consciousness connecting photography, language, memory, and journey. For Scrittura Obliqua, Campigotto presents nine works displayed on a background resembling worn paper, where the images “resist like castaways clinging to a drifting plank.”

Federico Clavarino – Ballgame, 2025

Set around Brussels’ Jeu de Balle flea market, Clavarino’s project recalls Baudelaire’s figure of the ragpicker in its meditation on transience, urban decay, and time. The artist casts and photographs discarded objects, transforming them through an almost alchemical process — just as poetry reshapes the matter of words, sound, and form. He pairs and reconfigures objects in visual and poetic “passes” or “rhymes,” exploring transformation as a mode of reality.

Sabrina D’Alessandro – Fotopiuvoli Trivulziani, 2009–2025

D’Alessandro juxtaposes a selection of photographs from her archive with words drawn from Leonardo da Vinci’s Trivulzian Codex, in a visual and phonetic dialogue that is emotional rather than conceptual. The resulting triptychs play on visual and sound resonances, inviting viewers to partially “solve” their enigma. The work is part of her ongoing Leonardo Parlante project (since 2022), focused on Da Vinci’s writings and his role as a “collector of words.”

Linda Fregni Nagler – Untitled (Drawings), 2025

Inspired by Hércules Florence, a photographic pioneer in Brazil, Fregni Nagler explores the passage between drawing and photographic image, recovering the meditative and existential experience of hand drawing. Starting from her own photographic archive, she painstakingly redraws and enlarges images on tracing paper, which becomes both matrix and negative, then contact-printed back into a photographic image. For Scrittura Obliqua, she presents three variations on a single motif — a Fresnel lens, symbol of light, projection, and the cyclical journey outward and back.

Alessandro Sambini – The Poetry of the Steak, 2025

Sambini’s project stems from research into AI and its ability to understand “the physical, inexplicable, carnal pleasure of nibbling a child’s cheek.” Inspired by David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), he revisits earlier explorations of the nude body through generative AI. The work investigates the limits of artificial intelligence in reproducing human physicality, evoking a world of synthetic bodies and digital deities. It reflects on the tension between erotic imagery and censorship, reality and artifice, suspending moral judgment to open a contemplative space on contemporary experience.

Alessandra Spranzi – Poesia in forma di rosa, 2025

Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s collection Poetry in the Shape of a Rose, Spranzi photographs books from her personal library, reflecting on the impossibility of capturing the true beauty of a rose. Her naturally lit images reveal title pages and details that evoke symbolic worlds without direct references to author or publisher. The result is a delicate poetic sequence of six “image-words,” guided by Pasolini’s voice and transforming over time like petals unfolding.

Paolo Ventura – a bas Guillaume, 2025

Ventura revisits the missed final meeting between Giuseppe Ungaretti and Guillaume Apollinaire on November 11, 1918 — the day of Germany’s surrender at the end of World War I. In Paris, the jubilant crowd shouts “À bas Guillaume” (“Down with Wilhelm”), referring to the defeated Kaiser Wilhelm II, but to Ungaretti these words sound ominous. Rushing to Apollinaire’s home, he finds his friend dead. Ventura recreates this moment through photography, painting, and sculpture, in a melancholic, surreal atmosphere. Ungaretti’s words are inscribed on the artist’s own hands, turning memory into tangible presence and reflecting on loss and the evocative power of visual language.

On 11 October 2025 at 4:30 p.m., the publication of the book Scrittura Obliqua, published by Quodlibet with book design by Studio Sonnoli, will be presented. Edited by Davide Rondoni, it includes all projects and essays by Davide Rondoni, Matteo Balduzzi, Corrado Benigni, Michele Nastasi, and Mauro Zanchi, in the presence of the authors and artists.

Through Scrittura Obliqua, the National Museum of Photography reaffirms one of its core missions: not only to preserve and promote photographic heritage, but also to foster production and experimentation, supporting contemporary art as a tool for cultural reflection.
The works, which become part of the Museum’s permanent collection, strengthen its role as a space for interdisciplinary dialogue, where photography is conceived as a porous language capable of engaging with poetry, word, sign, and thought.

The exhibition is part of the Ubiqua Festival – Photography and Poetry, held from 11 to 14 September at Villa Ghirlanda and the National Museum of Photography. Beginning with future editions, the festival will expand its dialogue to include music, theatre, and performance arts.