18 Giu Il letto, le pietre / The bed and the stones

il letto, le pietre/ the bed, the stones

a photobook by Daniele Cinciripini and Serena Marchionni

designed by Marco Fava

is selected for the

Photobook Exhibition at Athens Photo Festival,

13 June – 28 July 2019 | Benaki Museum / Pireos138

In recognition of the increasing importance of the role of the photobook in contemporary visual culture, Athens Photo Festival will present once again an exhibition dedicated to the form of book. The Festival features a selection of over 200+ new photobooks from all over the world, including photobooks independently or commercially published and distributed, handmade, self-published, book dummies, exhibition catalogues, zines and limited edition photography books, etc.

Athens Photo Festival is the leading international festival of photography and visual culture in Southeastern Europe, and one of the five oldest of its kind in the world.

The Festival seeks to bring together emerging and established artists and photographers from around the world with the aim to reflect the diversity of photography and visual culture today.

Through its expanded programming and the year-round activities, Athens Photo Festival is committed to offering a dynamic platform for exchange of ideas, artistic expression and engagement with photography in all its forms.

Exploring critical issues of our time, the Festival provides a critical context where the impact of the ever-changing visual culture can be raised and discussed. Athens, today, is the city facing the challenges for Europe. This put us in a unique position to collaborate with international artists and organisations.

The 2019 main program will take place from 13 June to 28 July 2019, at the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138. The main exhibition programme will be comprised of a curated selection of over 100 entries, selected through an international open call for submissions.

At the core of the Festival, is an extensive and multi-layered program of events and initiatives, including learning and public programs, talent development initiatives, social practice, and community outreach. In addition to the main venue-based program, the Festival encourages community involvement through satellite exhibitions in various locations in the city.

The bed, the stones is a four-handed diary of a on foot journey, we walked 210 km from Mazara del Vallo to Palermo, in Sicily. A reflection made of pictures and pauses, pain and revelations, marked by the slow and repetitive rhythm of the walk through the island, from sea to sea.

This book consists of a series of notes about the meaning of look, the sudden awakening of our conscience when something comes at sight and we feel like we’ve just captured a pure presence, and we seem to understand, even if only for an instant, the meaning of our being in this world.

This visual flow is determined by the movement of body, that conditions the way we live and feel the space; memory is unimaginable without physical dimensions, in this book we’ve looked for a resonance between images and places, trails and memories, we’ve tried to name things while our bodies were crossing them; we’ve done that by foot, repeating for long days a simple, elementary and subversive gesture: walk.

This book has been realised during the Laboratorio del Cammino’ Summer School 2018 “Sicilia coast to Coast, walking through vulnerable territories”. Serena and Daniele are members  of the Laboratorio del Cammino’s team which is a network of students and researchers motivated to investigate the role of walking in challenging planning education.