Vernissage

“Vedute e visioni di Porto Vecchio” exhibit opening

Palazzo Gopcevich – Sala Bobi Bazlen
Via Gioacchino Rossini, 4 - Trieste

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Thursday 24 October 2019
17.00 - 18.00

With the presence of the Councillor for Culture, Giorgio Rossi, of Laura Carlini Fanfogna, Director of the Museums and Libraries Service of the City of Trieste, of the OP Museums of History and Art Stefano Bianchi.

Inauguration of the photographic exhibition “Vedute e visioni di Porto Vecchio” (“Trieste’s Old Port Views”) in the photographs of the Photo Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art and the surrounding area (24 October 2019-6 January 2020).

The photographic exhibition, organized by Claudia Colecchia, head of the Photo Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art, includes the historical photos of Giuseppe Wulz, Anna Scrinzi, Alois Beer, Giornalfoto, Adriano de Rota, Ugo Borsatti and the most recent photos by Gabriele Basilico, the photographer of the Photo Library Marino Ierman, Eugenio Novajra kept in the Photo Library of the Civic Museums as well as those of the photographer Graziano Perotti who participates in the exhibition on the occasion of the Trieste Photo Days. A selection of the photos taken as part of the Instameet of Porto Vecchio, organized with the Council for Communication, will be exhibited.
The opening will be followed by a discussion with the authors Graziano Perotti, Eugenio Novajra, Marino Ierman and the curator in Sala Bazlen.

From Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 5 pm
Free entrance

A port is always a port, in other words a flowing reality, the image of life, says Giani Stuparich in an article published in “Il Tempo” on 4 February 1960.

A stage of memory, to quote Paolo Costantini, the Porto Vecchio has always been an object of interest to photographers from Trieste and from elsewhere. The photographic representations are an interesting way of seeing an institution that is an essential component of the city’s identity.

The choice of exhibiting in the Sala Selva of Palazzo Gopcevich is not accidental: in addition to hosting the Photo Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art, which preserves almost 3 million photographic assets from 1840 to the present day, the Porto Vecchio extends from the mouth of the Canale di Ponte Rosso, on which the palace has a privileged view, to Barcola. It includes five original piers, the breakwater built in 1875, the hydrodynamic power station, the electric conversion substation, warehouses, hangars, loading and unloading docks.

The exhibition focuses mainly on the portion of Porto Vecchio that is now being revitalized for new purposes, and is divided into several sections.

The quantity and quality of the iconographic sources dedicated to the Port, from its birth to the present day, offer a narrative path through images, which is also a witness to the evolution of photographic techniques: from its origins to the most recent digital art photographs to those posted on the social network Instagram.
The exhibition is completed by a selection of shots taken on the occasion of the Instameet held in Porto Vecchio, last March, as part of the event of the Administration Week, promoted by the departments of Culture and Communication in collaboration with the Igers FVG and Pasocial. In this case, they are visual testimonies shared in a ubiquitous, horizontal and simultaneous way that, beyond their aesthetic value, possess a documentary value because, as André Gunthert claims, they allow amateur photography to contribute to the construction of the story of current events and its preservation.
All together they offer a captivating puzzle of the face and the historical stratification of a highly significant partition of the city: multiple glances freely move from views to single elements, vital or abandoned, proposing new points of view.
And the images are loaded with obvious and latent meanings for what they show and what they don’t, revealing at the same time the flowing reality of the place and the self-portrait of the individual flaneur.