This year Foam and Pakhuis de Zwijger joined forces in the form of three Livecasts around the exhibition Foam Talent, wherein we will speak with six upcoming artists in total. This second conversation of the series focuses on new approaches within photojournalism examining if it is possible to document a place without showing the main subjects and objects. The two photographers Simone Sapienza (1990, Italy) and Camillo Pasquarelli (1988, Italy) choose alternative ways of storytelling for their project. The viewer is invited to come along and is challenged to look deeper
Simone Sapienza works with a sequence of metaphorical responses to notions of power, economy, energy, exoticism, and politics that characterize the current Vietnamese society. In the form of. Sapienza’s images prompt the viewer to question their presumptions about a country that is still ruled with order and control, yet eager to ride the wave of economic freedom. Camillo Pasquarelli’s project “Monsoons never cross the mountains” attempts to capture the emotional landscape of the region of India’s Kashmiri and its people. Strongly influenced by their poetry he chose a traditional point of view; the view of a child. Both aim to create a compassionate representation of their subject by choosing an emotional approach that goes beyond one-dimensional documentation. Their visual approach challenges the traditions within photojournalism.
© Simone Sapienza
Isabelle van Hemert is a picture editor at De Correspondent. She studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and immediately realized that photography was not an end in itself for her. She saw and sees it as a means to better understand image mechanisms and viewing behavior. In addition to her work at De Correspondent, she is a creative producer at Radical Reversibility.
Simone Sapienza is a documentary photographer, graduated in 2016 in Documentary Photography (First Class with Hons) from the University of South Wales – Newport. In September 2018, his first photobook “CHARLIE SURFS ON LOTUS FLOWERS” has been published by AKINA Books. He has received several international prizes awarded by The British Journal of Photography, PDN, Photographic Museum of Humanity, amongst others. His pictures have been published in several magazines such as Monopol, The British Journal of Photography, Io Donna, New Republic, PDN, La Stampa, Al Jazeera, La Repubblica, Vogue Italia, and others. In 2015 he has co-founded Gazebook – Sicily Photobook Festival, while since 2016 he is aboard Minimum in Palermo, where he lives with his partner and their daughter.
Camillo Pasquarelli is interested in long-term projects adopting photography as a tool of knowledge contaminated by the self-reflective approach of anthropology. In the last five years, he has been working extensively in the valley of Kashmir, India, at first documenting the political conflict between the population and the Indian administration, and later trying to explore a more personal and oneiric approach to the issue. His first book “Monsoons never cross the mountains” was published by Witty Books in 2020. Camillo is a lecturer at the Quasar Institute for Advanced Design in Rome. His projects received several awards such as LensCulture B&W, Shortlist at PH Museum Grant, Best Rising Talent at Gomma Grant, Alexia Foundation Grant, Fotoleggendo Award, Shortlist Unseen Dummy Award.
