Senigallia City of Photography continues its commitment to promoting and showcasing great international photography, dedicating a new exhibition to one of the most important and significant Italian collections.
Flat time is the right time, a unique opportunity to see more than one hundred emblematic images on display that explore the photographic medium's relationship with bodies, places, surfaces, and still lifes—subjects dear to art and photography, both historical and contemporary.
Curators Roberto Maggiori and Luca Panaro have selected from the vast collection of 67 international authors who best represent these macro-themes, each of which is preceded by a reflection that introduces the visual journey. The exhibition is divided into two locations: Palazzo Bisaccioni in Jesi with the section dedicated to bodies and Palazzo del Duca in Senigallia with photographs of places, still lifes, and still lifes.
The exhibition reflects on the importance of a collection as a means of interpreting the evolution of artistic language through a series of personal choices, offering a perspective on photography while simultaneously highlighting the forward-thinking and stylistic recurrences offered by the medium. The collection in question belongs to Pier Luigi Gibelli, a plastic and aesthetic surgeon who began collecting photography in the early 1990s, discovering his passion for collecting, an expression of the same aesthetic sensibility that guides his profession. Visiting the exhibition, beyond the thematic sections and their distribution across the two exhibition venues, one can note a particular aptitude for the construction of the image.
Some of the works on display favor close-ups. In many cases, the photographer seems to be attempting to observe reality from a different perspective, one that the human eye doesn't always allow. This is precisely why it's original and lends itself to new research opportunities. Photography's adherence to reality has now been surpassed, and the image's color palette follows our perception of things in media representation.
The photographer is increasingly less inclined to document a place, and is instead more interested in the occurrence of an action that he himself causes to happen within the landscape and which respects only the internal rules of his own artistic poetics.
Photographs on display by
Berenice Abbot, Charlotte Abramow, Giulia Agostini, Nobuyoshi Araki, Evgenia Arbugaeva, Jessica Backhaus, Roger Ballen, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Hans Bellmer, Jacopo Benassi, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Karl Blossfeldt, Andrea Botto, Piergiorgio Branzi, Brassaï, Sophie Calle, Silvia Camporesi, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Federico Clavarino, Mario Cresci, Gregory Crewdson, Paola Di Bello, Robert Doisneau, Elliott Erwitt, Walker Evans, Joan Fontcuberta, Vittore Fossati, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Paolo Gioli, Robert Gligorov, Guido Guidi, Florence Henri, Todd Hido, Kenro Izu, Ogawa Kazumasa, Taisuke Koyama, Uliano Lucas, Urs Luthi, Esko Männikkö, Allegra Martin, Nino Migliori, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Walter Niedermayr, Erwin Olaf, Giulia Parlato, Regine Petersen, Paola Pivi, Barbara Probst, Jan Saudek, Ferdinando Scianna, Andres Serrano, Malick Sidibé, William Eugene Smith, Kiki Smith, Alec Soth, Alessandra Spranzi, Tilo & Toni, Franco Vaccari, Paolo Ventura, Weegee, William Wegman, Edward Weston, Joel Peter Witkin, George Woodman, Masao Yamamoto.
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication "Flat Time Is the Right Time. Bodies, Places, and Still Lifes from the Pier Luigi Gibelli Collection," edited by Roberto Maggiori and Luca Panaro. With texts by Mauro Carbone, Antonello Frongia, Roberto Maggiori, and Luca Panaro. Graphic Design by Emiliano Biondelli. Published by Quinlan, 2025.
The exhibition was promoted by the Marche Region as part of the Senigallia City of Photography project and organized by the Municipality of Senigallia in collaboration with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi.
