In July 2017, Hamburg hosted the G20, the summit of the heads of state of the world’s major countries, which took place a few months after Donald Trump’s first term in office, and shortly before the strong tensions in Catalonia. In this hot and tense climate, violent clashes between police and demonstrators took place throughout the city. The streets of Hamburg were pervaded by rivers of black hooded people who set the city’s squares and main symbols of power on fire.
Umberto Santoro (Palermo, 1995) is a visual artist and photographer working between Palermo, Venice and Milan. His practice moves between documentary photography, archive and a critical reflection on the image as historically sedimented matter, working on the tensions between perception, memory and power. He understands the image as an active space of inquiry — a site of friction between what appears and what remains invisible, removed or sedimented — and investigates in particular the apparatuses of state and economic power and the forms of popular resistance that run through them, with a focus on Southern Italy and its historical and contemporary landscapes.
Fine art prints available — send a request for more information and commissions.