La Capitale RossoBlu Siderurgico di Irene Pucci

On Saturday, June 6, 2026, at 5:30 pm, in the Conference Hall of the National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art of Basilicata in Palazzo Lanfranchi, the book La Capitale RossoBlu Siderurgico (The Red and Blue Siderurgical Capital), a project by artist Irene Pucci, will be presented, curated by MIP – Matera International Photography APS ETS. The event is part of the program of MIPphest 2026, the 10th International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts, and is part of the association's commitment to "Matera Mediterranean Capital of Culture and Dialogue 2026," a vibrant space for exchange between perspectives, practices, and imageries of the contemporary Mediterranean. The author will be in conversation with Carla Cantore (president of MIP, curator, and professor of Phototherapy at the Master's Degree in Neuroaesthetics at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Antonello Di Gennaro (art director of MIP and pro-photographer); Maristella Trombetta (Professor of History of Aesthetics at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro") and Lorenzo D'Addabbo (Sfera Edizioni). Irene Pucci's photographic work stems from an autobiographical dimension and unfolds as an intense and complex visual narrative of the city of Taranto. A city that presents itself to the eye through two symbolic and identity-defining registers: on the one hand, the "red-and-blue" universe, linked to the imagery of Taranto Calcio; on the other, the presence of the former Ilva steelworks, which has profoundly affected the urban, social, and emotional landscape. The images oscillate between belonging and distance, between what endures in collective memory and what is cracking in the present. The city appears as a field of visual and emotional tensions, where beauty coexists with wounds and where vision does not simply document, but seeks to interrogate what remains and what changes. More than a reportage, the book is an act of memory: a personal journey that becomes a shared narrative. An intimate, participatory gaze that transforms individual experience into a form of collective listening. What emerges is an invitation to pause in the ambiguity of the gaze, avoiding simplifications, to restore Taranto in its complex truth, "in its simultaneous strength and fragility." From this perspective, the volume opens a broader field of reflection on the role of Southern Italy in the contemporary Mediterranean, understood as a space of relationships, cultural intersections, and the continuous redefinition of identities. Cities thus become sensitive devices, capable of conveying not only their own image, but also the possibility of a shared reading of the present. The dialogue with Matera fits naturally into this horizon. Matera, too, is a city that has successfully transformed its memory into a cultural language, making its historical condition a form of exhibition and relationship with others. Today, in its role as the "Mediterranean Capital of Culture and Dialogue," it presents itself as a place for listening and symbolic construction, where differences are not added but rather confronted. The aforementioned comparison between Matera and Taranto thus becomes a necessary step: two southern cities that, despite their different trajectories, share the ability to produce unresolved, open, and continually redefined imaginaries. An emotional and cultural geography that seeks not synthesis, but relationship. In this sense, culture asserts itself as a practice of connection: not a simple representation of reality, but a space in which reality is questioned, reinterpreted, and returned to the community as a possibility. Irene Pucci's book fully engages with this tension, offering a visual device that does not close meaning, but opens it.

La Capitale RossoBlu Siderurgico di Irene Pucci

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