The Italian Cultural Institute in Strasbourg is hosting – from 9 November 2023 to 7 February 2024 – the traveling photographic exhibition “Sander Sardinia 1927,” curated by Florent To Lay as part of a project bringing together the Italian Cultural Institutes of Hamburg, Cologne, Montreal and Strasbourg.
In 1927, when German photographer August Sander travelled to Sardinia (“the forgotten island”) and made his photographs, the island at the centre of the Mediterranean was a world apart, a land out of time and history, but also a place at the dawn of important changes. August Sander explores Sardinia with the attitude of the documentary photographer and skilfully succeeds in turning his testimony into an out-of-time narrative, thus giving the project – which remained mysteriously unknown and unseen during his lifetime – an extraordinary modernity. Sander’s photos tell the story of men and landscapes. Shots, now turned into testimonies, that renew the need to explore a land that still meets the expectations of the most passionate travellers. Following Sander’s lens (and his footsteps), we are urged not to merely dwell in front of the individual photos, but to go beyond and explore the off-screen as well.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Florent To Lay has created a catalogue in four languages (Italian-English-French-German), with the artist’s 22 shots, an interview with Oliviero Toscani and excerpts from the texts of Sander, Ludvig Mathar ed Elio Vittorini.
