Transit time curated by Veronica Lanconelli (Osservatorio fotografico) is a photographic project by Axel Babini and Gianmarco Missiroli that invites viewers to cross the invisible boundaries separating the city of Ravenna from its industrial port, exploring the Ravenna Container Terminal from a perspective that combines corporate documentation and personal artistic research. Commissioned by TCR, the exhibition reveals the parallel universe that exists behind everyday Ravenna: that of fog-shrouded docks, mechanical workshops, and industrial plants that rise majestically and ominously in the port landscape. These environments, which already inspired Michelangelo Antonioni for his Red Desert and have profoundly influenced the imagination of generations of artists, not only from Ravenna, find new life through the lens of the two photographers, who. confront, in their first joint exhibition, a theme that has become classic in the history of photography (at least in so-called “documentary-style” photography) and with their ideal masters: Stephen Shore, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri and, in general, the Italian school of landscape photography. The photographs that make up the exhibition sequence alternate between fascinating glimpses of the terminal, where colourful containers stand out against leaden skies and port cranes draw essential geometries, and intimate portraits of the workers who animate this industrial microcosm.
The exhibition project stems from an idea by TCR – Terminal Container Ravenna and is fully supported by the company.
The Transit Time exhibition is part of the Elementary School of Photography programme, a free training course aimed at young people aged 14 to 35 who live or study in Ravenna. It is an atypical course, divided into a series of weekend sessions between March 2025 and June 2026, which will take place in various locations around the city. The Elementary School of Photography is a joint project between the municipal council’s youth policy department and the APS photographic observatory, a permanent photography research laboratory founded in Ravenna in 2009. The guides for the course are Nicola Baldazzi and Veronica Lanconelli.
Presentation on 12 September at 6 p.m. at Sala Martini, followed by the inauguration and aperitif (until 10 p.m.).