On the occasion of the exhibition Portraits. Collection Florence and Damien Bachelot, a series of public meetings is being offered to explore the theme of the photographic portrait, by exploring its forms, uses, and meanings through interdisciplinary perspectives.
The programme is composed of appointments designed to offer new keys to interpretation: from the portrait as an expressive language in cinema, to its symbolic and documentary role in the process of national unification, to the personal and intimate story of two collectors who share their passion for photography as an act of memory, identity, and relationship.
NEXT EVENT: September 30, 2025 | 6:00 PM | Collecting Photography: A Crazy Passion
Damien Bachelot, collector of the exhibition Portraits, in conversation with Elena Franco, architect, photographer, and “secret” collector. Moderated by Tiziana Bonomo.
ℹ️ – Online booking or by phone at 011 5621147 (Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00; Sat, Sun and holidays 10:00–18:00)
📌 FIRST EVENT | THURSDAY, JULY 17th, 2025 | 6:00 P.M.
Unexpected Cinema. Ritratti dal cinema.
A dialogue between Simone Martinetto, set photographer, Giulio Sangiorgio, journalist and film critic. Moderator: Tiziana Bonomo.
For the opening meeting, the theme of portraits deals with cinema and its myths.Thanks to Simone Martinetto’s images and Giulio Sangiorgio’s skill, we will witness a intense exchange of ideas on what portraits can tell us about well-known actors, film stories and the eternal opposition of photography versus cinema.
In collaboration with ArtPhotò which inaugurates the new series “Interweaving Words and Images” dedicated to cinema. An event to be seen and heard.
Simone Martinetto works as a photographer, director, artist and teaches at the University of Bologna as an adjunct professor. His artistic research uses photography as a privileged medium but also makes use of video, installation and writing. As a set photographer for cinema, he has worked on major film productions in recent years, following their entire production and photographing some of the most famous Italian and French directors and actors such as: Marco Bellocchio, Giuliano Montaldo, Lina Wertmuller, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Berenice Bejo, Margherita Buy, Pierfrancesco Favino, Valerio Mastandrea and many others.
Giulio Sangiorgio is a critic, lecturer and programmer. He is editor-in-chief of the weekly film, television, music and entertainment magazine ‘Film Tv’ and of the historical magazine published by the Experimental Centre of Cinematography ‘Bianco e nero’. He teaches Forms and Models of Contemporary Cinema at the IULM University in Milan. In the festival field, he directs I mille occhi – Festival internazionale del cinema e delle arti in Trieste and B.A. Film Festival in Busto Arsizio, and is a member of the selection committee of Filmmaker Festival in Milan.
📌 SECOND EVENTT | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11th, 2025 | 6:00 P.M.
The face of the Risorgimento. Portrait and birth of a nation through photography.
A dialogue between Alessio Petrizzo, researcher at the University of Padua and Silvia Cavicchioli, scientific director of the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento. Moderator: Alessandro Bollo.
Silvia Cavicchioli and Alessio Petrizzo discuss the role and significance of photographic language in the context of the Risorgimento, exploring its functions of testimony, symbolic construction and legitimation of national identity. The dialogue begins with a selection of emblematic images from the photographic archives of the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano, offering food for thought on how photography contributed to ‘imaging’ the birth of the nation.
- Silvia Cavicchioli (1971) scientific director of the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano, she teaches Contemporary History presso il Dipartimento di Studi storici dell’Università di Torino, dove presiede il Corso di Laurea in Cultural Heritage. Tra le sue ultime pubblicazioni, Sfida al congresso di Vienna (Carocci, 2023), I cimeli della patria (Carocci, 2022) e Anita. Storia e mito di Anita Garibaldi (Einaudi, 2017).
- Alessio Petrizzo is a researcher at the University of Padua, where he teaches Contemporary History and Media and Communication in History. He trained and worked between the Universities of Pisa, Florence, Bari, Lausanne and Lyon. He is interested in 19th-century political and cultural history. On issues of visual culture, he has edited or co-curated: Il lungo Ottocento e le sue immagini. Politics, Media, Entertainment (Pisa 2013); the exhibition Political Icons. Celebrity and new media at the time of the Risorgimento (Mantua 2018); Visuality and political socialisation in Italy’s long nineteenth century (École française de Rome 2018). Among his latest publications: Parole di brigante. Storia e autobiografia di Luigi Martino, 1841-1902 (Roma 2025).
📌 THIRD EVENT | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30th, 2025 | 6:00 P.M.
Collecting Photography: A Crazy Passion.
Damien Bachelot, the collector of the “Portraits” exhibition dialogues with Elena Franco, architect, photographer and secret collector. Moderator: Tiziana Bonomo.
Fascinating to discover in the confrontation between two collectors, and not only, how a common passion is read to the desire to investigate, keeping images to look at, to look again, to go deeper. Damien Bachelot is well acquainted with Elena Franco’s authorial work and her focus on France and neighbouring countries. Elena Franco is well acquainted with Damien Bachelot’s seriousness, commitment and passion. A dialogue full of nuances and curious surprises.
- Damien Bachelot is a French art collector with a passion for photography, who forms a patronage duo with his wife Florence. Since the early 2000s, the two have built up one of the most important private collections of photographs in France, known as the Bachelot Collection. Their collection, comprising around a thousand prints, highlights humanist, social and documentary photography of the 20th century, while being open to contemporary works. They regularly exhibit their work, as they did at the Villa Medici in Rome and now in Turin, illustrating a century of photography history.
- Elena Franco deals with territorial planning and public policies and often integrates photography into her projects as a tool for documentation and research. Since 2012 she has dedicated herself to places of care with the Hospitalia photography project, exhibited in numerous national and international contexts and present in public and private collections. A collector herself, she has developed a constant reflection on the value and use of the archive as a design and cultural resource.
