PHOTOLOGY ONLINE EXHIBITION'

STORMY PEAKS

POETICS OF SPACE
CONTEMPORARY ALTERATIONS

Exhibition: 26.1. - 22.3.2026

Artists:
VITTORIO SELLA
EMILIO FANTIN
ANSEL ADAMS
LUCA VITONE
LUCA CAMPIGOTTO
ED RUSCHA
RICHARD LONG
SISSA MICHELI/THOMAS RIESS
MIKLOS GAÁL
MARTIN PARR
ILKKA HALSO
MAURIZIO CATTELAN
ANNE DE CARBUCCIA
PAOLA PIVI
SARA ROSSI
CARLO MOLLINO
OLIVO BARBIERI

STORMY PEAKS
PART OF CULTURAL OLYMPIAD
Photology is proud to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games with the exhibition Stormy Peaks, presented during Milano Cortina 2026 as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Featuring works by modern / contemporary artists and photographers, this is the first time in Olympic history an art exhibition will be exclusively hosted on a 3D online platform, available worldwide 24/7. Photology reaffirms its naturally innovative spirit in promoting photographic arts. After founding the first Italian gallery in Milan in 1992, launching a pioneering artistic website in 1996, and opening the first e-commerce site in 1999 in partnership with Arte’, Photology has consistently been at the forefront of embracing new technologies. Aligning with the rise of social media, in 2012 Photology curated the exhibition 20ForU via Facebook for its twentieth anniversary. Since 2020, the launch of Photology Online Gallery has sealed its commitment to developing new web-based exhibition formats. Stormy Peaks is presented under the patronage of Comune di Cortina, and with the generous support of Surefoot, a leading American ski footwear company. The curatorial choices and selection of works have greatly benefited from collaborations with international galleries such as Galleria Brun, Milano. Special thanks go to Giovanni Malagò, without whom the original vision for the Stormy Peaks project would not have been possible. The team of the Cultural Olympiad, all the artists, their foundations, archives, numerous lenders, and notably the developers of the new platform, are the true driving forces behind this endeavor—an initiative brought to life through visionary ideas and courageous decisions. These essential ingredients are what make any innovative project possible within the remarkable story of humanity’s ongoing evolution.
Davide Faccioli Photology > Founder

AN OLYMPIC STATE OF MIND
THE ART OF DESCENT, THE BEAUTY OF ASCENT
The mountain landscape, an unchanged witness to life on our planet, has always represented both a challenge and a call to bold women and men, ready to risk everything to conquer hitherto inaccessible summits. This drive toward excellence and discovery is renewed today in the fu- sion of sport and art, two disciplines that, in different eras, have chosen snow-capped peaks and jagged summits as the privileged stage for their triumphs. From the pioneers of mountaineering and photography, who dared to explore and depict the mountain in its purest and wildest forms, a path has opened that has brought the essence of the alpine landscape into contemporary culture. Sport, with its Olympic impetus and the spectacle of alpine ski races, and art, with the innovative languages of Land Art and the avant-gardes, have mutually nourished themselves on high-altitude emotions, offering a form of elevation that engages body, mind, and spirit. In this encounter, every daring descent and bold ascent becomes a metaphor for inner challenges and self-overcoming. On the same natural stage, amid snow and rock, stories of heroism, passion, and creativity unfold, where sport and art share the same will to excel, transforming the aesthetic encounter with the mountain into a unique and unrepeatable human experience.
Kristian Ghedina
Former Downhill Ski Champion

PHOTOLOGY ONLINE ONLY SUSTAINABLE ART HELPS THE PLANET
Since 2020, Photology has been developing advanced solutions based on 3D technologies and immersive virtual environments applied to online exhibition formats. The new 3D platform, created in collaboration with a team of computer engineers in Helsinki, introduces new design and optimize exhibition experiences through a high-performance graphics engine and dynamic interaction systems for artworks. Through this technological skill, Photology strengthens its pioneering role in merging art and innovation, providing an exclusive tool for cultural dissemination and opening new opportunities for curators, artists, and institutions. The result is an advanced digital environment that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional galleries, creating a more direct and engaging interaction between visitors and the artists works. The new Photology Online platform integrates interactive elements embedded directly within the 3D environment, enabling activation of multimedia content (audio, video, and technical documentation) without interrupting navigation. It also includes a modular informative Lobby Area designed as a preliminary Halle, suitable for multimedia contents, partners information and institutional presentations. Our digital infrastructure is engineered to significantly reduce the costs and environmental impact associated with traditional art shows (artwork production, physical installation, transportations and energy consumption). The result is a highly accessible and sustainable exhibition system capable of maintaining high museum-level standards without geographic limitations.
Emanuele Melli
Bit Boutique > Owner

POETICS OF SPACE CONTEMPORARY ALTERATIONS
The art of photography uncovers a largely untouched ‘poetics of space’ just in time, at the turn of the 20th century. Pictorialism is at its peak, and Alpine landscapes are known mainly through paintings. Suddenly, in the western Italian Alps, small black-and- white images printed on light paper with black borders begin to appear. The blind stamp reads ‘Studio Vittorio Sella’. These vintage pictures still stand out for their profound understanding of evolving social communities in Alpine life. Today, Sella’s archive is preserved by the Fondazione Sella in Biella, Piedmont, Italy.
A tribute to Vittorio Sella’s imagery of Alpine landscapes, huts, and chalets comes a century later from Bassano’s conceptual artist Emilio Fantin, who contributes twelve ‘Untitled’ works from Val Musiera to this exhibition. In search of vernacular meaning in the formation of popular communities, Fantin reveals his natural inclination towards the isolated, remote reaches of the Italian Alps.
Another exceptional discovery occurs in California decades later, when art expert Albert Bender identifies a talented young photographer, Ansel Adams. Despite becoming a guide at Yosemite National Park and a member of the Sierra Club, Adams is the first photographer to enter the art market. His black-and-white works, produced using an innovative printing technique (the Zone System), are acquired by MoMA’s photography department as early as 1937. They demonstrate how the American environmental movement—before any hiking ambitions—is founded on Adams images of the magnificent American West. A radical shift towards so-called ‘straight photography’ and the f/64 Group manifesto emerges in the post-war period, with a new artistic dogma prioritising conceptual elements over the medium’s purity.
A necessary reference to painting comes from the Ligurian artist Luca Vitone’s project The Eyes of Segantini. This painterly vision, coinciding with the purity of mountain peaks, is vital to understanding the more recent ‘stormy’ era. Vitone’s photographic works seek to restore an ocular vision of the mountains akin to that of 19th-century painters, especially Giovanni Segantini. Luca Vitone pursues a conceptual path to reclaim a pure nature—one of extreme, solitary relation, evoking Thoreau in Walden. His project includes a mural reproduction of Segantini’s design for the Swiss Pavilion at the 1900 Exposition de Paris.
While the Dolomite rocks still bear fossil traces of marine organisms from ancient geological eras, human presence on the most inaccessible mountains is relatively recent. Outlined and dotted by rudimentary interventions during the First World War, human activity here has a utopian character: land and stone works defending the homeland’s borders, undertaken by soldiers between 1915 and 1918 who transformed this natural scenario as much as possible. An aesthetic bordering on Land Art inspires the topographical research of Luca Campigotto, who—in a ‘no limits’ adventure— guides us along arduous paths, hidden trenches, and dangerous narrow-gauge trails, yielding images of incredible chromatic results.