The winners

Five winners, five different interpretations of the theme. Discover the works and motivations of the Jury here.

SENIOR WINNER

Silvia Camporesi

Silvia Camporesi, a Philosophy Graduate, exploits the language of photography and video-making. Her recent research has prominently explored various locations throughout Italy. Her works are featured in public and private collections, such as: MAXXI, Rome; Farnesina Collection, Rome; ICCD, Rome; MART, Rovereto, BNL Milan.

SHIMMERING CINECITTÀ

Cinecittà is hardly present in pictures. I imagined it as a shimmering world, however unused sets in view reminded me of abandoned towns. There is an air of mystery, a still and enigmatic atmosphere surrounding them. Simulation and truth (houses, doors and sets are made of plaster and slightly smaller than their actual size), fullness and emptiness play with each other, showing a one-of-a-kind world, where hidden and invisible elements pave the pay to imagination. What struck me is the colourful walls, doors opening onto nothing, and ladders leading nowhere. In keeping with my search for places that only exist within the relationship between fiction and reality, I chose – after fighting to be granted the relevant authorizations – to portray these currently unused sets.

Motivation

For having grasped and represented the invisible, by exploring the feeble ridge that sets simulation and truth apart. The visual journey suggested by the Senior award winning artwork shows us the lines of contact between the Award’s theme and those aspects of reality that challenge our understanding and our imagination: mystery and enigma.

YOUTH WINNER

Giovanni Sambo

Giovanni Sambo (Venice, 1995) works with photography and video-making. A Design Graduate at the Polytechnic University of Turin, he studied Documentary Filming in Milan. In 2023, with his brother Daniele, he ranked first at the Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa Award for Young Artists. He currently lives and works in Venice.

(Mr Vitelli’s) Slides

This photographic work includes three night shots, obtained by projecting some old 35mm slides directly on views of Venice. The slides come from the photo archive of Paolo Vitelli, an amateur photographer who dabbled with photography between 1970 and 1990, and whom I only had the pleasure to know through his shots. I stepped into Vitelli’s life unbeknownst to him, by managing over 5000 shots – which would otherwise have been destroyed – that are a testimony of 30 years of his and my city’s (Venice) life. I tried to set a place and time to our meeting with these photos, through long exposures, by mixing Vitelli’s day-to-day fragments with today’s chimneys’ concrete grain.
Urban architecture becomes the schedule of another vivid and lived city. A place where past and present question each other, and fight off an invisible oblivion, by joining our two gazes.

Motivation

For having conceived the invisible as oblivion and corrosion of time, before which photographic art stands as a manual of resistance, a breeding ground of ideas, and a tool to establish connections between men, their places and their past, celebrating an ability that marks the noblest manifestation of our species: empathy.

AMATEUR AWARD WINNERS

Marco Filipazzi e Francesca Villani

Marco Filipazzi attended the Scuole Civiche di Cinema in Milan, and works for the silenzioinsala.com website. Francesca Villani attended the Ceramic Art School in Faenza, and works at an artisan workshop. They are both passionate about photography, and about urbex and funerary art in particular.

Forgotten Echoes

There are invisible places with no memory of them. They lie abandoned, crystallized in time, suffocated by dust, mould and cobwebs: insane asylums. Chrysalises filled with ancestral suffering, cold solitude and deafening silence.
The halls, walls and rooms are permeated by an energy that does not wish to be forgotten, made up of memories that try to reach you to whisper something in your ear, like an impalpable echo.
This is the journey we want to take you on with our shots, by shining a light on the invisible reality of these places, and telling their story, hoping that they can seep under your skin, and pervade you with a mad energy.

Motivation

For having courageously and essentially represented mental energy as a feeble vibration, which, in its most intense and powerful manifestations, can be transferred to a place and remain there forever, longing for someone who will keep its memory and who will still remember how to understand its meaning.

COMMENDATION – ACADEMY

Alessandra Book

She was born in 2001 in Rome. In 2023, she completed her Photography studies at the IED in Rome, and on the same year, she was one of the finalists at the Ragusa Foto Festival. Her dissertation was published on the Espresso Magazine. She is currently studying History of Arts at La Sapienza University.

A Song for Our Ancestors

My grandfather Augusto’s desire was to have his ashes scattered in the Tevere River, where he used to dive when he was young. I took off on a journey to follow the hypothetical course of those ashes, following the river flow out until Ostia. And so, the beach became a long farewell, where my grandfather’s remains are blended with past and present organisms and beings, and become part of a whole. Augusto blends in with all the souls of this world who believed in this journey and in (re)becoming one with nature. To me, the creation of these images was a celebratory act, and for one shot in particular, I collected some water from the Tevere River, and then tried to imagine the initial impact between Augusto and water.
A Song for Our Ancestors is a glorification of the eternal journey, which, although incorporeal and hidden from our perception, lives in nature’s great cycle.

Motivation

For having courageously reflected on the invisible reality of death, presenting it as the pinnacle of our existence and a reconnection with the whole, using it as an excuse to celebrate the great cycle of nature, and to highlight the truth according to which our ancestors continue to live on in our memory and in our gratitude.

TERNA’S HIGHEST VOTED WORK

Leli Baldissera

Born in Brazil, she lives and works in Rome. She is an artist, photographer and researcher. She holds a Degree in Visual Arts and a PhD in Social Anthropology, where she focused on female artists. She has 15 years of experience as a photographer, during which she worked for several photo studies and as freelancer in Porto Alegre.

Ocupação

An occupied building in the centre of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Every human being with their characteristics and the desire to turn that occupied place into a home. Their inner world projected outside, by making every balcony, every window a vision of the invisible. A poster, a bike, a brick wall, hanging rugs and clothes, several colourful doors. A person? A place where those who lost their home, for one reason or the other, meet each other and build it. What does ‘home’ mean? The image does not show the people living there, only their traces, the objects they own, as if they had a life, an energy of their own. People invisible to society, who find a way to live in their parallel realities. I wanted to convey this, when I shot this photo, on an avenue close to my house, in the Centro Histórico district. And now, being a person who lives far from my native land, I continue to wonder about the array of meanings the word ‘home’ can take on.

Motivation

For having obtained the highest number of preferences by Terna’s people, who viewed and voted the finalist works on the TernaCult portal. This artwork brings the Award’s theme to the field of social reflection: home as symbol and archetype, as the keeper of our inner experience, as a port of shelter and consolation, even for society’s invisible people.