The Siena Awards Festival officially kicked off on Saturday 24 October with nine photographic exhibitions set up in six different locations between Siena and Sovicille. Despite the current situation, it was decided to keep the beauty alive, to enhance the photographic art and to exhibit extraordinary reports by photojournalists from all over the world.
Due to the legislation in force, the rooms can be entered with limited access. This situation will allow the visitor to enjoy in the best way and in complete safety the exciting sequence of images proposed by the 6th edition of the Siena Awards Festival, which lasts from 24 October to 29 November 2020.
An unforgettable experience tailor-made for photography enthusiasts, which will allow you to get to know one of the most beautiful places in the world through this widespread photographic exhibition.
“We couldn’t Have Ever IMAGINED the UNIMAGINABLE” is an exhibition within the exhibition, along the streets and in the squares of the historic centre of Siena. It is real journey dedicated to the cities of the world in full lockdown during the Covid-19 emergency.
Along the streets and in the squares of Siena, large panels will be displayed, with portraits of men and women photographed in different contexts and with different photographic styles. The visitors will be accompanied in a virtual journey that will take them to “fly” over different cities all over the world, in a way that was impossible to imagine before the pandemic. Each QR code, imagined as a mask on the mouth of the people portrayed in the photo, will refer to the original image and to an unedited video shot during the lockdown by the photographers participating in the Siena Awards.
Thanks to the QR Code, the discomfort of the mask will become a tool that will allow us to combine historical evidence with the feelings aroused by a health emergency never experienced before. The world of imagination of the Siena Awards in this way offers an occasion for reflecting and flying over unusual cities, closed in an alienating void.
The main exhibition “Imagine all the People Sharing all the World” will be held in a re-qualified building in the suburbs of Siena. It will showcase the award-winning photographs and the best pictures of the 2020 Siena International Photo Awards.
The exhibition documents the problem of waste disposal at the Agbogbloshie scrap yard in Accra, one of the largest open-air e-waste dumps in the world, highlighting the extensive damage caused to the ecosystem and to health.
“Fight for freedom! Stand up for Honk Kong!” these words were repeated by hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens. The reportage documents the protesters' "struggle for freedom", between pacifism, violence, frustration, despair and social pain.
This reportage was realised in Sumatra, Indonesia, and it aims to show the contradictions of human behaviour towards the environment. On one hand human beings are destroying virgin forests, wounding and killing animals, whilst on the other they’re making every effort to save the very same animals.
There is a tragedy that takes place in silence and that day by day claims the lives of countless species of animals on Earth. This is the story of chimpanzees who have been abused in circuses, exploited in advertising campaigns and imprisoned in subhuman conditions.
The famous South African photographer is specialized in documentary work and is known for alternative approaches in his photojournalism, including global campaigns on sustainability. The exhibition showcases a dozen projects focused on animal protection and conservation that span the globe.
“Above us Only Sky” is an exhibition of a collection of large-scale aerial photographs by the award-winning photographers of “Drone Awards”, which will be showcased in the beautiful rooms at the Museum of Natural History of the Accademia dei Fisiocritici.
The exhibition “I Wonder if You Can” features the work of contemporary photographers as they push the limits of this age-old medium. The artists use an innovative approach to still photography to subvert the viewer’s expectations.
The rampart of Love represents the starting point of the outdoor photographic journey of the exhibition held in the beautiful setting of the Medici Fortress. It explores the hidden wonders of the world around us: multi-layered imagery to illuminate the experience of traveling, bold colours and blurred images to create dream-like snapshots of a moment in time, and much more.
