What do photographs of our time really show us?
Cortona – 23 exhibitions, 76 artists from around the world: from Palestine to Iran, from France to Canada, from the United States to Russia, from Ukraine to Italy, to "explore the spaces between ruptures and repairs, between conflict and unity, valuing the processes of healing and transformation that lead to reconciliation, and seeking ways to overcome the social, political, and economic fractures that mark our world." This is the 15th edition of the international photography festival Cortona On The Move , scheduled for July 17 to November 2, 2025, in the Tuscan village. This significant milestone confirms the festival as a global reference point for photography and a platform for cultural production, as well as a support for young talent.
At the heart of the 23 exhibitions are the fractures of our time. From Alfredo Jaar , one of the artists most committed to exploring power imbalances and sociopolitical divides, who for Cortona On The Move co-produced the original exhibition Inferno & Paradiso with Photo Elysée – Museum of Photography in Lausanne. In this exhibition, 20 of today's greatest photojournalists were invited to select two images from their archives: the most heartbreaking and the one that brought them the most joy.
A Family Trilogy by Christopher Anderson & Marion Durand is an attempt to reconcile the photographer's perspective and that of his family.
Distance & Belonging by Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji, through three projects – Home Away From Home, Disruptions and At Home, Elsewhere – offers a reflection on the notions of exile, belonging, identity and memory.
Artist Jan Banning's exhibition, Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda , presented with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, is dedicated to the 1994 genocide in the African country, which claimed 800,000 lives. And Ukrainian photographer Vic Bakin's project, Epitome , a collection of scars—both visible and invisible—generated by the chaos of war.
This edition's title is Come Together . We discussed it with artistic director Paolo Woods . Contemporary society is increasingly divided, increasingly fractured, and I told myself that reconciliation, the "coming together," was certainly difficult to achieve, but something we absolutely had to strive for. It's a utopia, and like all utopias, it's impossible to achieve, but we must strive toward that goal. The festival's program features many themes. But what seems to me to be the common thread is the ability to interpret what we might call the "spirit of the times."
There's a lot of collective and personal trauma on display. What did you want to convey with this proposal?
That photography is necessary. That photography serves to tell what's happening in the world. And so we have exhibitions on Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, climate change, gender violence. But it also serves to tell our own stories, the traumas we may have suffered. Reconciliation with our past. And photography can be an extraordinary means of looking at the world we live in.
What's it like to host a festival like this in a place like Cortona?
Cortona is a place with enormous potential, because it's already a tourist destination in itself. Bringing the entire photography world there—those who make a living from it or are interested in it—means connecting that audience with visitors drawn to the town, who perhaps wouldn't normally see exhibitions like this, but who, being there, go. We try to address all aspects of the photographic world, but also to create something meaningful, something with something to say. It's not just entertainment. We're here to explore what photography can do today and why it's so necessary.
Today, we consume photography primarily through social media, on our cell phones. The risk is a trivialization of the medium. What stage are we at?
We're in a phase where photography is increasingly used: we use it to meet people, to order at a restaurant, to communicate with our children on Instagram. But there's less and less photographic culture. This is why I believe photographs don't say anything on their own; they say something in context. And a festival must offer something else: it must teach us how to look at photography.
Is this why the relationship with the lyrics is fundamental, and why you care so much about it?
Absolutely! I'm a ping-pong fanatic between photography and text. Photography is a kind of trigger that sets something in motion, but then the text takes us to another level of understanding, and at that point we return to photography with a different consciousness. That's why you can look at all the exhibitions in Cortona through images, but then you can enter them on a different level thanks to the texts.
If you had to recommend an absolutely unmissable exhibition among all those proposed by Cortona On The Move?
Well, for an artistic director, all the exhibitions on the program are like children, so they're equally beautiful. But if I really had to choose one, it would undoubtedly be Alfredo Jaar, a universally recognized artist who exhibits in major museums around the world. He's not a photographer, but an artist who uses photography. For Cortona, he created an immersive installation with projectors, asking 20 of the greatest photojournalists working on the hottest fronts (from Gaza to South America) to choose the most terrible and the most beautiful shot of their careers. Thus was born the project Inferno e Paradiso, which you can admire at the Fortezza. In 20 minutes, we see 20 photographs of hell, through their lenses, and then—on the same screens—20 of the most beautiful images they've ever captured.
Luce
