MICHAEL KENNA – CONFESSIONALS

“CONFESSIONALS
Reggio Emilia, 2007-2016″

Opening of the exhibition Saturday, October 21, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.
speakers, together with the author:
Tiziano Ghirelli, Alberto Melloni, Sandro Parmiggiani

Exhibition curated by Sandro Parmiggiani | October 21 – November 26, 2017

Location:
Oratory of St. Spyridon
via Nuova, 7 – Reggio Emilia

The exhibition consists of 40 photographs, selected from the 80 that make up the book of the same name published by Corsiero editore, the result of a decade-long friendship between the English photographer and the city of Reggio Emilia. During his first stay in Reggio, Kenna, invited to photograph the Emilian landscape from the Bismantova stone to the Po, slipped into the church of San Pietro on a rainy day, photographing its confessional. From that episode, he later came up with the idea of developing an entire project dedicated to confessionals, which the English photographer has made over the years during progressive stays in the city and province.

The exhibition will remain in the Oratory of San Spiridione until Nov. 26, 2017, with opening on Friday afternoons from 4 to 7 p.m. and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.; it will be in Bologna in March next year and then will be hosted in several foreign cities.
“My early religious experiences in the town where I was born, and later in the seminary of a Catholic college, greatly influenced the photographic work I have pursued ever since. […] As a photographer, I have long been fascinated by the memories and traces, the stories that have been explained over time, the atmospheres we have left behind, the remnants and artifacts.
These images of confessionals, in Reggio Emilia, symbolize what I continue to seek-the invisible through the visible, the intangible within the tangible, the illusion of reality. If words, thoughts and emotions could be made visible, these containers of memories would reveal a multitude of hidden and compressed secrets, confessed, exchanged and poured out in exchange for a few prayers and a priest’s blessing and forgiveness” (Michael Kenna).

Photographs of Michael Kenna’s confessionals in Reggio churches
were made possible by the Office for Cultural Heritage and New Worship Buildings of the Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla.