Carmelo Nicosia's Japan Photography Exhibition at Fondazione Brodbeck, Catania

Fondazione Brodbeck and adjacent gallery Collicaligreggi in Catania present "Japan, flight maps," a solo exhibition by photographer Carmelo Nicosia. The show features 45 prints selected from 8,000 travel shots, including five blue, one red, and the rest black-and-white, in formats ranging from 112 x 167 cm to 60 x 40 cm. Nicosia, 57, former director of the Accademia di Belle Arti and current head of its Photography and Video School, captures cities, transit places, sea, sky, and invisible territories in a traditional travel photography style, avoiding digital effects. Blue prints reference the Japanese cultural association of blue with night, depicting Tokyo skyscrapers as seen through a hotel window. The single red print pays homage to night photographers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. Three versions of Mount Fuji appear as aged, yellowed prints, reflecting its mythological divinity; Nicosia used anonymous 20th-century negatives for post-production. An appendix at Collicaligreggi presents four works made from online-sourced matrices: the Hiroshima atomic mushroom, the bomber plane, a radiation-scarred child, and a 15-year-old kamikaze portrait. Nicosia explains the atomic bomb remains an unresolved trauma for his generation, noting other artists are similarly reworking this history.