On the initiative of the Permanent Representation of Italy to UNESCO, the photographic exhibition 'Close/Far' was inaugurated yesterday evening in Paris, at the prestigious 'Mirò Rooms' of the organisation's headquarters. Curated by the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (CNR), the exhibition was born from a call for photographers belonging to immigrant communities resident in Italy, who were invited to tell, through the lens, their experience in relation to cultural heritage. The result is a repertoire of over 300 photographs taken by professional and amateur photographers from as many as 29 different countries, from China to Guinea, from Venezuela to Romania.
The aim of the initiative is to bring to UNESCO, through art and photography, concrete manifestations of the sense of belonging that migrant communities maintain with the cultural heritage of their contexts of origin. The relationship with the roots and their importance in defining individual and collective identity are indeed among the assumptions UNESCO places at the basis of the concepts of material and immaterial cultural heritage, in turn privileged vehicles of integration between peoples.
An initial staging of the exhibition was presented at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in autumn 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The exhibition 'Close/Far' now arrives at UNESCO and can be viewed by the Paris public from 1 to 10 July. The opening of the exhibition, which was attended by the President of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO, Franco Bernabè, was attended by representatives of all the Organisation's member states.
Two of the authors of the photos also gave their testimonies at the vernissage: Mohamed Keita, an Ivorian who, thanks to the photographic skills he acquired in Italy, has collaborated in the opening of two photography schools for children in the suburbs of Bamako, Mali, and Nairobi, Kenya; and Nilowfer Awan Ahamede, of Pakistani origin, who undertook a journey to get to know his father's country, crossing it with his eyes and capturing it with his photographic lens in the "Faces of Pakistan" series.
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