The big names of international photography are coming to Siena. And San Galgano Abbey will be exceptional location

From Sept. 30 to Nov. 19, 2023, the Siena Awards Photo Festival returns: this edition will once again bring big names in international photography to Siena and its environs, engaging the city and the territory. William Albert Allard, with a retrospective on his 50 years of work for National Geographic, and Brian Skerry, a photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine wildlife and underwater environments. They will be joined by Gabriele Galimberti, a photographer from Arezzo who explores the complex relationship between the United States and firearms, and the Siena Awards group shows dedicated, as every year, to the three photography awards with shots and videos coming in from all over the world: the Siena International Photo Awards, Creative Photo Awards and Drone Photo Awards, which this year will have theAbbey of San Galgano as an exceptional new location. With a well-established formula, the visual arts festival will return to animate the historic center of Sovicille and will arrive for the first time in Chiusdino. In fact, acting as a preview of the 2023 edition will be, for the first time, the open-air exhibition Chiusdino!Creative, set up in the medieval village of Chiusdino from July 8 to Nov. 19.

The retrospective of William Albert Allard, a pioneer of color photography, is titled Five Decades, A Retrospective and recounts, with the largest anthological exhibition dedicated to him ever organized in Italy, five decades of work for National Geographic as a writer and photographer always going in search of “what happens at the margins” and combining beauty, mystery and a sense of adventure. Brian Skerry’s exhibition, titled The Sentient Sea, will instead tell a visual story with images collected from more than four decades of exploring the oceans, places of beauty and mystery, difficulty and hope. Specializing in marine wildlife and underwater environments, Skerry has been a contract photographer for National Geographic Magazine since 1998, for which he has told stories on every continent and in almost every ocean habitat. Gabriele Galimberti ’s exhibition The Ameriguns will turn the spotlight on the history of American gun culture through the lens of the photographer from Arezzo, Italy, who is able to shed light on the complexities of the human experience by highlighting the nuances and contradictions of our world.

From July 8 to Nov. 19, 2023, theAbbey of San Galgano will host the outdoor photography exhibition Above Us Only Sky, which will showcase the year’s most beautiful aerial images awarded at the Drone Photo Awards, the world’s most important photographic award for aerial photography. The exhibit will take visitors on an evocative journey through the wonders of aerial photography, showing images captured in every corner of the world. Thanks to the perspective from above, there will be an extraordinary view of the beauty and fragility of our planet, with a view of the world that can hardly be obtained from the ground. In addition to Chiusdino, the Siena Awards will return to enliven Sovicille with Sovicille!Creative. For the third consecutive year, the streets of the village a few kilometers from Siena will be decorated with large photos, works by internationally renowned photographers displayed inside the doors and buffered windows of homes, palaces and historic buildings. The goal is to extend the We!Creative format over time to other places in the Siena area, combining the names of the locations involved with the red symbol of the heart and the term Creative, with an obvious reference to the Creative Photo Awards from which the selection of images on display comes.

“The international success and continued growth of the Siena Awards,” says the festival’s artistic director, Luca Venturi, “rewards a great team effort that has been consolidated year after year thanks to all the institutions and partners who have supported us and never backed down: the Municipalities of Siena and Sovicille, joined this year by the Municipality of Chiusdino; the University of Siena; the University for Foreigners of Siena; the Natural History Museum of Siena Accademia dei Fisiocritici; the Accademia dei Rozzi; the Santa Maria della Scala Foundation; and the Camollia Green Area Association, 85. Together with them, I thank the main partners Carrefour Market, Etruria Retail, Banca Mediolanum, Gabetti Lab and the partners Sienambiente, SEI Toscana, Terrecablate, Safety&Privacy, Il Fotoamatore and Iren SpA. All together, we are already working to give our audience an extraordinary edition 2023 and consolidate more and more in the international calendar of major events this event that brings the name of Siena in the world through great photography and visual arts.”

The Siena Awards Photo Festival is promoted by the cultural association Art Photo Travel in co-organization with the Municipality of Siena, under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Region of Tuscany, the Chamber of Commerce of Siena and Arezzo, and the University of Siena.

For info: www.sienawards.com

Photo by Brian Skerry.

The big names of international photography are coming to Siena. And San Galgano Abbey will be exceptional location

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