Exhibition

A Public Tool for Feminist Activism / Uno strumento pubblico per l’attivismo femminista

Exhibition / Reading Room of the Biblioteca Italiana delle Donne photobooks

Curated by Sonia Lenzi photographer and independent researcher / Orlando APS

The exhibition/reading room is part of the Photobook Feminist Dialogues series. It is organized within the Biblioteca Italiana delle Donne partnership in the three-year PRIN 2020 project Italian Feminist Photography. Identity Politics and Gender Strategies, on the occasion of the international conference Photography and Feminist Aesthetics. Italian and International Perspectives. Principal Investigator and Head of Research Unit, Prof. Federica Muzzarelli / Department of Arts, University of Bologna.

Photobooks are a tool for thought and interaction, poised between the personal and the political. They necessarily become public objects when included in the catalog of a Library like the Italian Women’s Library, the leading institution specializing in women’s cultural production, gender studies, and feminist studies in Italy. This selection highlights the relationship between books already in the catalogue, which were not historically perceived as photobooks, and recent acquisitions, conceived as an openness to different languages: those of photobooks, seen as democratic devices for activating forms of feminist struggle and resistance. The first photobook was also published by a woman, Anna Atkins, in 1843, but it was not immediately recognized, and its history must be rewritten, deconstructed, made accessible, and disseminated, including women and subjects who had not previously been part of it. This exhibition/reading room aims to contribute to this direction. We have attempted to build a dialogue between the photobooks, with the hope that it will be transformed into a dialogue with those who will be able to see the exhibition.

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The Biblioteca Italiana delle Donne was founded by the Orlando Association in 1983 and since 2000 it has been part of the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale / National Library Service (SBN), the network of Italian libraries promoted by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Regions and Universities, with the coordination of the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian libraries and for bibliographic information (ICCU). It is part of the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Sector of the Municipality of Bologna and is managed in partnership with Orlando APS.

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Venue: Sala del Timpano / Chiostro di Santa Cristina,  Via del Piombo 5 / Piazzetta Giorgio Morandi 2, Bologna

Dates: Thursday, 11 September – Friday, 19 September 2025

Opening Hours: 11–12 September*: 9:00 am – 6:30 pm,  13 September*: 9:00 am – 2:00 pm, 15–18 September: 9:00 am – 6:00 pm, 19 September: 9:00 am – 2:00 pm

* Coinciding with the conference “Photography and Feminist Aesthetics: Italian and International Perspectives.”

Further Information: Biblioteca Italiana delle Donne

Via del Piombo 5, Bologna

tel. +39 051 4299 411

bibliotecadelledonne@women.it

Web e social:

bibliotecadelledonne.women.it

@centrodelledonnedibologna @fotografiafemministaitaliana