The Center for Photography in Rome opens to the public with Irving Penn and Silvia Camporesi – Rome – Arte.it

Roma – On the day that celebrates the seventieth anniversary of the collaboration between Rome and Paris, the Center for Photography of Rome opens its doors, opening an international dialogue that looks towards Europe.
The seat of this revolution in the artistic panorama of the Capitoline Hill is the former slaughterhouse, one of the most ambitious urban renewal structures for the capital of Rome, which aims to return to the citizens, tourists and artists who will live there, a place in constant interaction with the facilities dedicated to photography at an international level.
To celebrate the opening of the new space, three exhibitions with Silvia Camporesi, Irving Penn and the exhibition project “Real bodies, Imagined bodies”, involving three artists, have been held in the Campo Visivo space dedicated to the contemporary.“Irving Penn photographs 1939-2007. Masterpieces from the collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris”curated by Pascal Hoël, Frë dë riquë Dolivët ë Alëssandra Mauro, presents a selection of 109 prints from the collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris, made between 1939 and 2007.
Historical signature of the magazine FashionPenn revolutionized the genres of fashion, portrait and still life photography, with an unmistakable style made of formal rigor, elegance and attention to detail. The exhibition highlights not only the power of his artistic vision, but also his extraordinary skill as a printer. Penn even experimented with sophisticated techniques such as platinum printing to achieve timeless images, which are today considered milestones in the history of photography.

Tribute to the slaughterhouse, 2025 © Silvia Camporesi

Within the new space there will be interventions by Silvia Camporesi, protagonist of a project that explores the relationship between time, memory and landscape, in the context of research and the most contemporary photographic language. Titled “There is a time and a place”the exhibition opening in the new spaces of the Photography Center of Rome Capitale, curated by Federica Muzzarelli, is inspired by the film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Peter Weir, a cult work in which places become protagonists of a story without resolution, born from a reflection on the concept of the rupture between real and artificial, nature and culture, presence and absence, past and present. As in the film, time seems to stand still, also in Silvia Camporesi’s images, and places become the visible result of the journey, of the artist’s physical and mental experience through geographical, historical and emotional areas. From a suspended Venice to the historical stratification of Armenia to the abandoned villages of Italy: Camporesi weaves a poetic atlas in which photography becomes an instrument of knowledge, control and loss at the same time.

The relationship between gesture and body that contaminates photography with projections and archival material is instead explored by the third exhibition, ‘Real Bodies, Imagined Bodies’ for ‘Campo Visivo’the space where the work of three artists takes place who exploit the field of view to experiment and suggest reflections.

“The Center for Photography – explains Manuela Veronelli, President of the Mattatoio Foundation – it is the foundation stone of the major cultural and urban renewal project, aimed at transforming the former slaughterhouse complex in Rome into one of the largest European centers dedicated to contemporary arts and cultures. The City of the Arts will be a place for production, exhibition and training, where visual arts, film, music and interdisciplinary practices can be integrated. Designed as a city within the city, it will be public, open, inclusive and traversable”. While Umberto Marroni, CEO of the Mattatoio Foundation highlights how the opening exhibitions and the Campo Visivo space immediately outline “the national and international vocation of the Center with the aim of becoming a point of reference for photography in Italy and for dialogue with the most important European and international institutions”.

The exhibitions are open to the public from January 30 to June 29, from noon to 8 p.m., every day except Tuesday.