3 photo exhibitions you shouldn’t miss in Milan during MFW

Finally,  the fashion week carousel landed in Milan, and the city is getting animated by fashion-related events that are also open to the public, spreading this beautiful, positive energy in the city. This season in particular, photography is stealing our heart, and we are here to tell you about 3 exhibitions you really shouldn’t miss on your trip to Milan, or if you live there.

“Dancing Emilia” Gabriele Basilico
Where: in the spaces of Nonostante Marras
When: From February 23 to March 26
In Antonio Marras’s poetic space, immersed in vintage furniture, dainty weaves and unusual objects, you can dive into an Italian 1970s summer, and join the escapist crowd going crazy on the dancefloor, along the melodies of local liscio — a folk dance from the northern Italian region of Romagna at the end of the 19th century — king Raoul Casadei, or perhaps along the disco beats of Saturday Night’s Fever. This multifaceted, psychedelic time in music was when discos and clubs first opened in the country, becoming an enchanted realm for Gabriele Basilico, who ventured into this new world with his camera, on dancefloors between Parma and Ravenna, to watch and tell the story of this great change in customs, and the arrival of new sounds, coexisting with local traditions. Fluttering miniskirts, strobe lights, glitter and flared pants are all telling signs of new behaviors, new entertainment spaces and styles, shifting alliances, new ways to relate between generations, and evolution of style.
Everything is shifting, except for one thing: dance “People who dance, portraits, my flash digs into the darkness and portrays moments, gestures, smiles, presence and absence, it is a tool of investigation, but also, actually mostly, of
recognition, a signal of work in progress, a memento for those who want to run away from it, and a point of reference for those who, in a spontaneous procession, want to be a part of the photographer’s representation.”

Portraits by Maurizio Galimberti
Where: Fashion Hub, in collaboration with the National Chamber of Italian Fashion
When: until February 27
Before smartphones reduced the time between snapping a picture and sharing it on social media to zero, photos used to have to be developed, something which required time and shrouded our shots in mystery until the time we
received the prints. There was one exception, though, and that was Polaroid — Instagram’s grandma! It was the 1980s and Italian photographer Maurizio Galimberti felt so fascinated by the sense of immediacy of this camera that it became the tool he used for his most famous work, Il mosaico fotografico, (the photographic mosaic), a deconstruction and recomposition of image, lending it a new interpretation. Galimberti was the founder of the Dada Polaroid movement, and he was soon chosen to portray a lot of characters from the show business with his “Mosaic” technique. At Fashion Hub, some of his most beautiful work is the frame around the work of new talent, young hopes of fashion from Italy and beyond.

“Spaghetti Disco. Creare Spazio Alle Memorie 1975/85” Lorenzo Cibrario
Where: Santeria Social Club
When: Saturday March 11
Our path through music and revolution of style: as is often said, everything comes back
over and over again, and music journalist Lorenzo Cibrario’s photos are a clear demonstration of this! London’s Red Gallery was the first to commission him a collection of the most moving adventures of Italian dance.
During a complex political and social time that saw young generations fight for their rights, cultural crossovers came into being that would later influence global consumption and contemporary trends.
“With the term Spaghetti Disco, you usually designate a specific kind of music that was produced in Italy at first, as well as in Europe later on, between the early 1970s and the late 1980s. The word spaghetti was used abroad to define this distinctly Italian musical style: pretty basic stuff, but it worked, I’m guessing also thanks to good marketing.” The photo exhibition and the original footage will be central to the Reverso – Festival di archeologia musicale, the Reverso festival of musical archeology, on Saturday March 11, in the space of Santeria Social Club.