Petra Bibeau, Untitled Rock Drawing (II), 2023 – Courtesy of the artist & Petra Bibeau 

The Disappearance

“As the Bicentenary of Photography approaches, the medium finds itself in a paradoxical position. Conceived, among other reasons, as a tool to preserve what would otherwise vanish, photography is now being celebrated at a moment when its own traditional form appears increasingly unstable, transformed, and challenged by processes that are altering its nature and status. This paradox is the curatorial starting point for this sector. Referring implicitly to the surviving image traditionally associated with photography’s origin, View from the Window at Le Gras, the project rethinks an anniversary that can also be read as a threshold: between commemoration and obsolescence, between mourning and re newal. In this sense, the history of photography becomes inseparable from the broader cultural, political, and material conditions of disappearance. The section investigates disappearance through multiple perspectives and tempo ralities. It brings together historical pieces produced to record subjects, places, and phenomena on the verge of vanishing, alongside contemporary practices that use pho tography to resist the marginalization of vulnerable communities, endangered lands capes, and fragile social realities. Other artists engage the notion of disappearance as a material process, creating works destined to alter, fade, or auto-destruct over time. Others push photography beyond its conventional boundaries by merging it with pain ting, sculpture, installation, or other languages and disciplines, to the point where the photographic image becomes barely recognizable. Particular attention is also given to practices shaped by algorithmic editing, software manipulation, and artificial intelli gence, where images retain a photographic appearance while increasingly severing their indexical relation to reality.” Bringing together historical and contemporary positions, as well as works ranging from straight photography to hybrid visual languages, the section reflects on disappea rance not only as a subject represented by photography, but as a condition increasingly affecting the medium itself.“

Zasha Colah

Zasha Colah is an Indian curator and writer. Since 2023, she is co-artistic director of Ar/Ge Kunst, BozenBolzano´s kunstverein. She co-edits Novellas, a series of books devoted to experimental writing, and collaborates on the podcast series POST IT (Rai Alto Adige, Rai Radio 1). She curated the 13th Berlin Biennale (2025), the 2nd Yinchuan Biennale (curatorial team led by Marco Scotini, 2018), and the 3rd Pune Biennale (with Luca Cerizza, 2017). She lectures in comparative curatorial studies at Nuova Accade mia di Belle Arti (Milano, 2018) and is on the editorial board of Geoarchivi (Meltemi & NABA) a series of books that reopen rebellious archives at different geopolitical lati tudes. She is currently a visiting fellow at Städelschule (2025– 26) where she lectures on processual and performative sculpture and its implication on contemporary forms of exhibiting.

Francesco Zanot

Francesco Zanot is a photography curator, writer and lecturer. Chief curator of Camera, Turin, from 2015 to 2017, he has curated personal exhibitions and books with and about artists such as Boris Mikhailov (Diary, Walther König, Cologne), Francesco Jodice (Pa norama, Mousse, Milan), Takashi Homma (Widows, Fantombooks, Milan), Erik Kessels (The Many Lives, Aperture, New York), Linda Fregni Nagler (The Hidden Mother, MACK, London), Luigi Ghirri (Kodachrome, MACK, London). His essays have been published in monographs on the work of several photographers and, together with Alec Soth, he is the author of the book Ping Pong Conversations (Contrasto, Rome). Director of the Master in Photography organised by NABA in Milan, he gave lectures and seminars in variousinstitutions worldwide, such as the Columbia University in New York, ECAL in Lausanne, IUAV in Venice, Universidad Politecnica in Valencia. Associate editor of cura torial platform Fantom ever since its foundation, he curated the inaugural exhibitions Give Me Yesterday, and Stefano Graziani: Questioning Pictures at Fondazione Prada Osservatorio in Milan. Since 2019 he’s artistic director of the of Foto/Industria biennial, organized by MAST Foundation in Bologna. His lastest book, Irrational, written together with Francesco Jodice, was published by SPBH in summer 2025.

Stefano Graziani, Natura Morta con Pappagalli, 2020 – Courtesy of the artist & Galleria Mazzoli

Ulrike Rosenbach, Female Energy Change 2 – “Supergirl”, 2026 – Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Gisela Clement