The Photo Solstice #1: Four-Day Photography Campus on Sardinia's Asinara Island

From June 21 to 24, the first edition of The Photo Solstice will take place on the island of Asinara, a former maximum-security prison that held mafia bosses such as Totò Riina, Leoluca Bagarella, and Raffaele Cutolo until 1999. The event is organized by the Fondazione di Sardegna, which three years ago launched AR/S – Arte Condivisa in Sardegna, a project aimed at opening private and public art collections on the island to the public. Thirty selected students will participate free of charge, thanks to an agreement between the Fondazione di Sardegna and the Assessorato al Turismo, Artigianato e Commercio of the Regione Autonoma della Sardegna. They will share the campus with ten distinguished speakers, including Lorenza Bravetta, former director of Camera in Turin and advisor to former Minister Dario Franceschini for the enhancement of national photographic heritage, and photographer Marco Delogu, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Delogu has dedicated his latest photographic project to Asinara, currently exhibited at the Museo Civico Palazzo Fabroni in Pistoia and at the Fondazione di Sardegna in Sassari until the end of August. Delogu stated that he chose to work on Asinara because of its history and geography, contrasting its painful past as a prison with the sense of beauty and freedom now experienced there.