My new work, “Humans of China” has been selected for an exhibition in Trieste (Italy) at the Museum of of Far Eastern Art within the frame of “Trieste Photo Days 2022“.
The exhibition will open 28th October 2022 at 10:00am. On Saturday 29th, 2022 at 10:00am at the Sala Xenia, a meeting with all the authors in exhibition during the Festival days will take place.
The protagonist of the exhibition is the trip to China, a country very present in the rich collections of the Photo Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art and the Civic Museum of Oriental Art. The contemporary shots of the Sicilian photographer Massimo Cristaldi, suggested by the art director of the festival Angelo Cucchetto and by the association president Stefano Ambroset, dialogue with the testimonies of the early twentieth century by the Japanese photographer Takuzo Yamane, kept in the Photo Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art.
The photographs of Takuzo Yamane’s travels between 1909 and 1916 are disclosed in the precious volume “Bird’s Eye View of the Far East“, with a green silk cover, sewn in Japanese style. The images depict various Chinese cities including Wuhan, Shanghai, then known as Eastern Chicago, Manchuria, mines, railway construction, foundries, factories, agricultural or industrial warehouses, gardens, archaeological sites, ports. and the most important buildings. Many photographs testify to the considerable presence of the Japanese and Westerners for business reasons in China at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the 21st century, Massimo Cristaldi puts aside black and white and returns a polychrome China where photography becomes an instrument of approach and participation. The author, who has always been interested in the representation of borders, documents, through photography, a personal itinerary of stories and stories in which the attention is focused especially on the faces of anonymous humanity.