Date: May 5 2023, 1:45 PM

Location: CVU BATANA

Exhibition by last year’s Photodays 2022 winner of the Grand Prix award

Pietro Millenotti (b.1973) is an Italian photographer based in Reggio Emilia. He graduated in International Business Marketing at the University of Wales. In 2000 he attended a two-year course in film directing at the National Academy of Cinematographic Arts in Bologna. Since 2007 his practice is delves mainly into the relation between man and territoriy, involving photography. Pietro’s work has been shown nationally in group and solo exhibitions. He is a founder member of Diecixdieci Photography Festival.

Black is the River
The photographic project was inspired by Charles Laughton’s 1955 film “The Night of the Hunter”. Black is the River is a transfiguration of a famous place, the Po River, through darkness and unrest. Fascinating elements can change perception and move it to the dimension of magical realism.
Silence, isolation, and darkness become writing instruments of the landscape and your own unconscious. The viewer is invited to a place where reality can open up to imagination and suggestion. Visual background and sensibility become guides for new individual stories.
All photos are part of a larger series and are digitized from a medium format film.

Landscape photography was created to capture the beauty of nature and create scenes that convey feelings of happiness, relaxation, and delight. When we talk about landscape photography in the context of contemporary photography, the finalists offer us a wide range of different approaches and motives. The beauty of the landscapes has been replaced by problematic images of the post-industrial era, while exotic motifs in the submissions have taken on the meaning of socially and ecologically engaged projects. In this category, the jury awarded first place to the exceptional project “Black is the River” by Pietro Millenotti. In this series of night scenes, the author managed to achieve a metaphorical transformation of the river Po so that the landscape along the river moved to the realm of the surreal.

Dejan Sluga,
President of the jury RovinjPhotodays 2022