Camilla De Maffei: The Boundaries of Documentary Photography
24.11.2024, 4:30 pm
As part of the exhibition “Tra il bianco e il nero (Between Black and White)”, Lab27 will host a meeting on Sunday, November 24, at 4:30 PM with Camilla de Maffei, photographer and educator. She splits her time between Milan and Barcelona. Specializing in the Balkans—where she has been active since 2009—she has focused her personal work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Albania. Here, using the exploration of a specific place as a starting point, she has developed several projects that investigate and question the relationship between territory and landscape (geopolitical, cultural, and social).
Interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of documentary photography, her practice is based on long-term engagement, the free appropriation of ethnographic methods, the exploration of narrative possibilities generated by the relationship between image and text, and the use of a hybrid photographic register that oscillates between anthropological observation and symbolic transfiguration.
Her projects have been exhibited in galleries, institutions, and festivals both nationally and internationally, including Fotofestiwal (Łódź, Poland 2023), Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, Italy 2023), Les Boutographies Festival (Montpellier, France 2023), Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation (Arles, France 2023), Sa Nostra Foundation (Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2022), Palazzo Massari (Ferrara, Italy 2018), The Half King Gallery (New York, USA 2016), among others.
Her project "Delta" (2014–2021) won the Mallorca Contemporary Photography Award (2021) and was published as a book by Ediciones Anómalas (2022). "Delta" was also selected for the Photobook Award at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2023), the Marco Bastianelli Award for Best Book of the Year (2023), the Urbanistica Institute Award (2022), and the I-Star Book Award (2021).
"The Great Father" (2018–2023), her project realized in Albania, won Fotografia Europea 2023, the Urbanautica Institute Award 2024, and the Open Program of Fotofestiwal Łódź (Poland). It also won the 2023 BUP Book Award, organized by the publisher Blow Up Press, which will publish the book in summer 2025. In 2011, in collaboration with photographer Eugeni Gay Marin, she founded El Observatorio, a space dedicated to photographic creation, specializing in visual storytelling.
Camilla De Maffei: The Boundaries of Documentary Photography
24.11.2024, 4:30 pm
As part of the exhibition “Tra il bianco e il nero (Between Black and White)”, Lab27 will host a meeting on Sunday, November 24, at 4:30 PM with Camilla de Maffei, photographer and educator. She splits her time between Milan and Barcelona. Specializing in the Balkans—where she has been active since 2009—she has focused her personal work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Albania. Here, using the exploration of a specific place as a starting point, she has developed several projects that investigate and question the relationship between territory and landscape (geopolitical, cultural, and social).
Interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of documentary photography, her practice is based on long-term engagement, the free appropriation of ethnographic methods, the exploration of narrative possibilities generated by the relationship between image and text, and the use of a hybrid photographic register that oscillates between anthropological observation and symbolic transfiguration.
Her projects have been exhibited in galleries, institutions, and festivals both nationally and internationally, including Fotofestiwal (Łódź, Poland 2023), Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, Italy 2023), Les Boutographies Festival (Montpellier, France 2023), Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation (Arles, France 2023), Sa Nostra Foundation (Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2022), Palazzo Massari (Ferrara, Italy 2018), The Half King Gallery (New York, USA 2016), among others.
Her project "Delta" (2014–2021) won the Mallorca Contemporary Photography Award (2021) and was published as a book by Ediciones Anómalas (2022). "Delta" was also selected for the Photobook Award at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2023), the Marco Bastianelli Award for Best Book of the Year (2023), the Urbanistica Institute Award (2022), and the I-Star Book Award (2021).
"The Great Father" (2018–2023), her project realized in Albania, won Fotografia Europea 2023, the Urbanautica Institute Award 2024, and the Open Program of Fotofestiwal Łódź (Poland). It also won the 2023 BUP Book Award, organized by the publisher Blow Up Press, which will publish the book in summer 2025. In 2011, in collaboration with photographer Eugeni Gay Marin, she founded El Observatorio, a space dedicated to photographic creation, specializing in visual storytelling.
