A contemporary look at the ancient, capable of restoring to our times and renewing in the present the original aura of works and monuments of a lost Mediterranean. An immersion in the vision of the past through powerful images, the fruit of a transformative photographic art. This and more is “Mimmo Jodice. Mediterraneo“, the exhibition curated by Carlo Sala , which welcomes the public from July 7 to November 8, 2026, at the Palazzo Lanfranchi of the National Museums of Matera , and then travels to the Centre d’Art Moderne in Tétouan, Morocco, from early December 2026 to mid-February 2027. Promoted by the Mission Unit for Cultural Cooperation with Africa and the Greater Mediterranean of the Ministry of Culture , in collaboration with the Municipality of Matera , the Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation , the MUNAF – National Museum of Photography and the Jodice Studio thanks to the availability of the National Museums of Matera at Palazzo Lanfranchi, and with the scientific consultancy of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture , the exhibition is part of Matera and Tétouan Mediterranean Capitals of Culture and Dialogue 2026, in a symbolic link between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
The exhibition features 83 photographic works, 68 of which are vintage silver gelatin prints on baryta paper with selenium toning, created by the artist himself between the late 1980s and early 1990s and belonging to the famous Mediterraneo series . They come from the private collection “i Cotroneo, Rome” and were lent for exhibition purposes by the collector himself and by the Farnesina Collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, which conserves and exhibits a portion of them. The exhibition is completed and integrated by 5 large-format 140×100 cm works from the Dancers series and an appendix of 10 vintage and modern works dedicated to Mimmo Jodice’s most recent research on the Mediterranean, from Studio Jodice. Together they form the corpus of the first major institutional monographic exhibition after the death of the artist, an undisputed protagonist in the history of contemporary European photography, and a great opportunity to present to the public and update the now historic Mediterraneo series , demonstrating how the artist has returned to these researches in a constant and gently stubborn manner over the years.
The images are the fruit of numerous explorations of Mediterranean culture and archaeology , beginning with his native land, to which Jodice was always attached, with visions of Paestum, Pompeii, Cumae, and Baia. The gaze then expands to a wider Mediterranean, stretching from Greece to Turkey, from Jordan to Tunisia, from France to Libya. Among the most famous works are the Athletes from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum and The Dancers, preserved at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, in which the ancient sculptures emerge from shadows that make them dynamic, almost animated by a vital impulse. These are images with a strong emotional pathos , as are all those on display depicting monuments and statuary, made possible by the skillful technical use of photography both during the shooting phase and in the darkroom, where the artist accentuated the contrasts and rendered the blacks deep and the whites dazzling. The exhibition also marks the occasion for the expanded and updated reissue of the book Mediterraneo , published by the New York publishing house Aperture, which accompanied a first major exhibition of Jodice’s images at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1995 and is now published by Marsilio with graphic design by Studio Sonnoli and integrated with further works related to the famous Mediterraneo series . The volume contains the curatorial essay by Carlo Sala , republishes the text by Predrag Matvejević published in the 1995 edition, and includes a contribution by Salvatore Settis , which previously appeared in the exhibition catalogue Attesa (Electa, 2016) and is presented here in its definitive version.
Promoted by the Mission Unit for Cultural Cooperation with Africa and the Greater Mediterranean of the Ministry of Culture , in collaboration with the Municipality of Matera , the Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation , the MUNAF – National Museum of Photography and the Jodice Studio thanks to the availability of the National Museums of Matera at Palazzo Lanfranchi, and with the scientific consultancy of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture , the exhibition is part of Matera and Tétouan Mediterranean Capitals of Culture and Dialogue 2026, in a symbolic link between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
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