I’m more interested in a photography that is ‘unfinished’ – a photography that is suggestive and can trigger a conversation or dialogue. There are pictures that are closed, finished, to which there is no way in (Paolo Pellegrin)

In physics, “the event horizon” refers to a theoretical prediction associated with black holes based on Einstein’s theory of relativity. In simple terms, once the event horizon of a massive cosmic object is reached, the gravitational pull is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape its attraction. It’s a concept as fascinating as it is far from the human experience, but we can imagine it as an event so intense and definitive that it changes the course of our lives. From the perspective of an observer, “the event horizon” can also be understood as the thin boundary between here and elsewhere; everything beyond this boundary disappears from our sight, just as many of the dramatic events of our world vanish from our view – and our conscience. With a focus on some of the most complex and urgent situations of our time, Paolo Pellegrin (Rome, 1964) has often witnessed “points of no return,” capturing the decisive moments beyond which, in space or time, nothing is the same as before. The exhibition currently taking place at the Stanze della Fotografia on the Island of San Giorgio, curated by Denis Curti and Annalisa D’Angelo, presents a scenographic installation that revisits key milestones in Pellegrin’s career. Over thirty years of work, largely associated with Magnum agency, the photographer has concentrated on various themes related to the human condition, from wars to the effects of climate change.

His lens has captured the dramatic conflicts in Iraq, Israel’s battles against Gaza, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces during the Mosul offensive, the war in Lebanon, Nigerian women surviving Boko Haram’s violence, the border wall between the United States and Mexico, detainees at Guantanamo in Cuba, refugees crowded on the Island of Lesbos in Greece, stories of urban loneliness during Covid, as well as the effects of the devastating tsunami in Japan and the wildfires that ravaged Australia, destroying over 46 million hectares of land. The exhibition does not follow a chronological thread but embraces these diverse moments and locations as a unified body of work, including pieces that deviate from pure reportage to approach figurative art, as the thirty “bird’s eye views” serigraphs captured in Namibia, Antarctica, Iceland, and Greenland, or the faces of people emerging from the Tokyo subway, lost in their thoughts. A selection of over 300 photographs, including an unpublished reportage from present-day Ukraine, covers a period from 1995 to 2023 and provides a detailed account of the fieldwork of one of the greatest photographers of our time.

Featured image: Angelina gioca a casa di sua nonna Sevla, Roma, Italia 2015 © Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum Photos