Yes to All // Mattia Micheli and Nicolò Panzeri

PHROOM

MATTIA MICHELI and NICOLÒ PANZERI

Yes to All

published by: Emergenze
text by: Matteo Cremonesi

“Reinventing the real as fiction, because the real has disappeared from our lives.”
Jean Baudillard

By organising a photographic survey on the anthropisation of the Alpine arc, Mattia Micheli and Nicolò Panzieri reorganise the narrative of the territory and landscape, giving life to images capable of belying the mythological character that traditionally accompanies the narration of these places.

In the photographic reconnaissance of the two authors, in fact, the naturalistic, intimist and traditionalist character that historically characterises the mountain, cloaking it with a certain purity and a certain, presumed remoteness from the rest of the world, is disappointed, reorganising through a collection of vivid images another vision for the same places.

An image—world in which the economy of tourism and has changed the signs that characterised the Alpine landscape, to the point of producing—grafting onto it signs and elements that can completely distort its original nature.
The images collected in Yes to All, are spectacular and at the same time painful, the modified landscape, which has become something else, bent to the practical needs of a mass to be entertained, is a landscape that serves man without any possibility of imposing itself and teaching something to those who pass through it.
Similar to a large amusement park, the Alpine arc portrayed by Nicolò Panzieri and Mattia Micheli is an area in which the unexpected, the difficulty, the mystery that constitute the essence of Alpine exploration are completely laid to rest in exchange for an experience of place that, so organised and disciplined, resembles in every way that which can be experienced in a theme park. A safe and easy place where all experiences are sure to resemble and relate to each other.

Born in Perugia in 1989, Mattia Micheli is a visual artist and documentary photographer based in Italy. He achieved a BSc in International Relations (2012, University of Perugia) and a BA in Photography (2015, Fondazione Studio Marangoni, Florence). During his academic residency at Fondazione Marangoni he participated in a student exchange program with Ulster University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He took part in several workshops with renowned artists (George Tatge, Mathieu Bernard Reymond, Paolo Verzone, Wolfgang Zurborn) and worked as Assistant Photographer (Abelardo Morell, Terraproject, Rick Pushinsky and Steve Double). He was lead photographer at the International Journalism Festival 2014, 2015, 2016. In 2016 he founded Stigma Archive: a collective box for the work of six Italian documentary photographers leading to the publication of a fanzine and with that an exhibition. He was recipient of Parallelozero Agency fellowship in 2016.
Since 2017 he’s been working in the field of contemporary photography taking part at various festivals with collective and personal exhibitions including Voies Off, Image Vevey, Encontros da Imagem, Athens PhotoFestival, Krakow Photomonth.
In 2018 he was invited to exhibit his work at Maison de l’Image Tunis, as part of a multidisciplinary art exchange program promoted by UNESCO. He is currently working on a project about the anthropization of the Alps.

Nicolò Panzeri, 1991, Milan, Italy. Documentary photographer based in Milan and Florence. The most recurrent themes in his work are related to environmental topics and how humans affect the ecosystem. Even if his approach may appear conceptual, it encapsulates a socio-documentary-based research.
In April 2018, Feed Us was included among those selected for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia. In May 2018, he was chosen as one of the participants in a Masterclass course organised by Magnum Photos and given by Alex Majoli. The resulting project was presented at the Triennale di Milano as part of the Milano Photo Week programme. Since June 2018 he started a fellowship program with Parallelozero agency. For his Feed Us project, in December 2018, he was chosen as one of the 15 finalists for the Ponchielli Award.
From January to March 2019, he was invited by Project for People to work for two months in India in the area around Kolkata, documenting the NGO’s projects.
In September 2019, on behalf of Oman’s Ministry of Tourism, he shot a photographic campaign on Oman’s new generation, which led to the Young: a new Omani generation exhibition at the Fabbrica del Vapore art complex in Milan and was featured in La Repubblica’s D magazine.
In June 2020, Feed Us was one of three projects to get a special mention at the 7th edition of the Graziadei awards. In the same month he has been granted as winner of ISPA 2020—Italian Sustainability Photo Award—creating in a six-month period a new body of work Feed Us II, presented at Triennale of Milan by Rizzoli group and published on Sette—7 and Corriere della Sera.
Since September until October YES TO ALL a long-term research along the Alps, achieved with Mattia Micheli, has been exhibited at Encontros da Imagem festival in Braga, Portugal.
In November 2020 his lockdown-still-life-series Anatomy of a Virus was selected among other 20 photographers as winner of REFOCUS#2 call for artists promoted by MiBACT—Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and MUFOCO—Museum of Contemporary Photography.