Davide Tranchina’s revealing snapshots of the island of Montecristo

Situated in the Tyrrhenian Sea and part of the Tuscan Archipelago, Montecristo is one of the wildest and inaccessible Italian islands. In his “40 days and 40 nights in Montecristo” photographic exhibition, Davide Tranchina reveals a land as fascinating as it is enigmatic. Curated by Irene Campolini and Luca Panaro, the exhibition is due to open at the Italian Ambassador’s Residence in Copenhagen on 3rd June and will run until 11th June. The photographs are the result of Tranchina’s metaphysical interpretation of the island: the images were taken over a period of 40 days, on a search for ancestral forms, and 40 nights of starry skies, where reality is artificially recreated in a dark room. The artist’s aim is to represent visual fragments deposited on the observer’s retina, in which the perception of the physical landscape merges with the internal visions of the individual. The exhibition will open at 5.30 p.m. with a welcome address by Stefano Queirolo Palmas, the Italian Ambassador to Denmark, and an introduction to the exhibition by its curators. The show is part of the Copenhagen Photo Festival programme of events and will also feature works by Lia Ronchi, the young Italian photographer who won the Artist-in-Residence award for young photographers. Lia Ronchi was selected by an international panel of judges as the under-35 Artist-in-Residence at the Italian Embassy in Denmark from May to June 2017. Over the last few months, Lia has explored the interplay between image, language and abstraction. Her project analyses photography as a way of telling stories or recalling memories without using representative images with explicit references. In her work, Lia encodes a language that interweaves time, culture and contextualisation, linking each graphic sign to a specific context.