Terna announces 5 winners of the 'Driving energy 2024' photographic award

Third edition of the free competition, open to all photographers in Italy, aimed at the promotion and cultural development of the country and new talents in the sector

ROME - Silvia Camporesi for the Senior Award with the work 'Shimmering Cinecittà', John Sambo for the Young Prize with 'Le trasparenze (by Mr. Vitelli)', Alessandra Book for the Academy Mention with 'A Song for Our Ancestors', Marco Filipazzi And Francesca Villani for the Amatori Award with 'Forgotten Echoes', e Leli Baldissera, whose work 'Ocupação' was the most voted by the people of Terna.

They are the winners of the third edition of the 'Driving Energy Award - Contemporary Photography', the free competition, open to all photographers in Italy, aimed at the promotion and cultural development of the country and new talents in the sector.The theme of this edition is 'The path of the invisible'.

“There are invisible forces that nevertheless produce visible and concrete effects – we read in the award materials – Electricity is invisible. The power lines with which Terna transmits it to the whole country are increasingly invisible.Photography and the world of art in general have their roots in the invisible:because it is based on seeing what others do not see (or do not yet see), and on the artists' practice of drawing on their own interiority to produce tangible works that can be shared with the public".

An invisibility that the prize participants also interpreted as social, that of migrants or Roma community camps, invisible to the city and to those who pass through it.Works also created with the use of AI, a technology that has fully entered the photographic art, a choice that offers an even more accurate view of new authors' research.

The five winning works, which win prizes for a total of 29,000 euros, and the 35 finalists are from today on display at Palazzo Esposizioni Rome, in a free entry exhibition, until Saturday 12 October.

SPRING:“4 MILLION EUROS FOR THE SECTOR”

“Italy boasts a great and important photographic tradition that we must enhance and support.In total we invest 4 million euros for the sector - he continues the president of the Culture commission of the Chamber Federico Mollicone – In May the Ministry of Culture increased the Photography Strategy fund – bringing it to two million seven hundred thousand euros.The initiative is aimed at supporting projects for the acquisition, commissioning, conservation and valorization of photography and Italian and international photographic culture.The project is part of the institutional actions of the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture aimed at promoting and supporting research, talents and Italian excellence in the field of photography in implementation of the strategic plan for the development of photography in Italy and abroad. 'abroad 2024-2026″.Again in implementation of the plan, "in August 2024 a public notice was published - for an amount of 600 thousand euros - aimed exclusively at the Diplomatic-Consular Network and the Italian Cultural Institutes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for the purpose to finance project proposals for cultural and exhibition events linked to the promotion of Italian photography abroad.As previously mentioned, Italian photography is an excellence of the cultural supply chain and must be considered as such in all respects also in the context of cultural diplomacy operations.In this sense, the Italian Ministry of Culture is supporting the 'Journey to Italy' exhibition curated by Luigi Ghirri in France, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris at the Hôtel de Galliffet", reports the president of Chamber Culture Committee.“In congratulating once again the high level of this new edition, I conclude with a memory of the great photographer Gabriele Basilico – for which the executive has allocated 180 thousand euros for an anthological exhibition on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth.Basilico wrote:'for me photography means taking samples of the real world and metabolising them as a necessary and nourishing substance for memory.I am convinced that I have a bulimic relationship with reality.' Initiatives like today's enrich the national offer and pose new cultural horizons", concludes the president of the Culture commission of the Chamber Federico Mollicone.