Photography Exhibition Explores Italian Festivals as Collective Memory

The Museo di Roma in Trastevere presents 'Legami intangibili,' an exhibition featuring twenty-eight photographic landscapes of Italian festivals. The project results from ethnographic research conducted between 2022 and 2024 by five photographers: Marina Berardi, Barbara Di Maio, Francesco Faraci, Francesco Francaviglia, and Fausto Podavini. Curated by the Istituto Centrale per il Patrimonio Immateriale, it was funded by the public call 'Strategia Fotografia 2022.' The exhibition uses photography as anthropological documentation to explore festivals as rituals that combat what Ernesto de Martino called the 'crisis of presence'—a loss of human stability in the world. The works capture festivals across Italy, from the Maggio di Accettura documented by Podavini to the Corsa dei Nudi di Lentini by Francaviglia, and urban celebrations in Palermo by Di Maio and Faraci. Berardi focuses on contemporary digital festivals like the Carnevale di Tricarico. The images reflect a melancholic view of festivals as acts of resistance against oblivion, echoing anthropologist Alfonso Maria Di Nola's concept of the need for the sacred. The exhibition runs at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome.