For 10 years, PhEST – International Festival of Photography and Art has allowed photography to question the present, placing it in dialogue with contemporary art, music, and urban space. At its core are the beautiful city of Monopoli and, above all, the Mediterranean, understood not as an exotic or identity-based backdrop, but as a place of passages, frictions, and cultural stratifications. The payoff see beyond the sea encapsulates this vision: looking beyond what is visible, beyond stereotypes, beyond established narratives.
Over the years, the festival has built a recognizable identity, capable of inhabiting the historic city center with indoor exhibitions and outdoor interventions, transforming it into a widespread exhibition device. Alongside this curatorial dimension is a direct and ironic communication style that shows the behind-the-scenes as an integral part of the project and helps create a less formal, more authentic relationship with the audience.
In this PhotoDesk interview, Giovanni Troilo, Artistic Director of PhEST, explains how this vision is built: from curatorial choices to the relationship with the territory, from the dialogue between photography and other languages to the opportunities offered to photographers through open calls, highlighting what makes the festival a distinct experience within the Italian landscape.
“See beyond the sea” defines your way of looking at the Mediterranean, of telling its story without relying on the usual imagery and by overcoming the stereotypes through which it is often represented. Over the years, how have you chosen to narrate it differently from more traditional approaches, and how has your curatorial direction evolved over time?
From the very beginning, we felt the need to shift our gaze. The Mediterranean is often told through very recognizable images: the postcard, reassuring beauty, or, on the other hand, emergency and drama. In both cases, these are powerful but extremely codified narratives.
“See beyond the sea” stems precisely from this: the desire to go beyond that surface, beyond the immediate image, to restore complexity, contradictions, and ambiguities. Over time, our curatorial line has evolved naturally. At first, the narrative was more closely tied to the Mediterranean in a geographical sense; today we increasingly think of it as a mental, political, and cultural space, a place of possibilities but also of fractures. We are less interested in “representing” it than in using it as a lens to talk about identity, power, migration, desire, and the future.
Above all, we are interested in overturning the point of view: making the Mediterranean a beacon, a place from which to look at the world, producing a Mediterranean gaze on the present, rather than only the other way around.
Every festival goes through a turning point, a project that changes pace and opens up a new direction. Looking back at past editions, which project most significantly changed your trajectory and made you realize that the festival could evolve?
More than a single turning point, PhEST has grown through layers. In every edition, there has been a passage that helped us better understand who we were and who we could become.
Sometimes this happened thanks to artistic residencies—such as Alejandro Chaskielberg’s work on olive trees or Piero Martinello’s work with fishermen—other times due to constraints, as during Covid, when the impossibility of using indoor spaces pushed us to take bold risks outdoors: underwater exhibitions, floating shows, exhibitions on islands. At other times, the introduction of major artists, such as Man Ray or Goya, led us to radically rethink the festival’s potential audience and allowed us to expand it significantly.
Little by little, we realized that PhEST could be something more than the sum of its exhibitions. From there came the idea of working on projects capable of truly dialoguing with urban space and with audiences that are not necessarily specialists.
That was the moment when we understood that the festival could become a cultural platform, capable of bringing together photography, art, music, publishing, and territory, without losing its identity—indeed, strengthening it.
Exhibiting in a city like Monopoli means engaging with alleys, squares, architecture, and open spaces that inevitably influence the way an exhibition is conceived, inviting visitors to access unusual exhibition venues (often inaccessible outside the festival period) and urban spaces. What has been the most complex or daring outdoor exhibition you have realized, and what made it possible specifically in Monopoli?
Outdoor exhibitions are always a challenge, because they imply a continuous dialogue with the city, with light, and with the daily flow of people. Some of the most daring were certainly the underwater exhibition created with National Geographic, the floating exhibition with Tadao Cern’s Confort Zone project, and the neon installation You Are (on) an Island by artist Alicia Eggert on the small islet just in front of the old town beach. These are projects that led us to reconsider the sea not just as a backdrop, but as a place of experience—literally immersive. In these cases, the audience does not simply look at a work; they pass through it, are forced to slow down, to stop, to interact with the space and with the installation itself.
Monopoli makes all of this possible because it is a porous, walkable city, where the boundaries between exhibition space and public space are extremely thin. Here, the outdoor dimension is not an addition to the festival: it is an essential part of the experience.
Your social media communication is far from the more institutional and “stiff” tone of many festivals: it is direct, ironic, spontaneous, and shows the behind-the-scenes and the people who build the festival as part of the project itself. Why did you choose this tone, and is there a line you do not want to cross?
We chose a direct, ironic, and human form of communication because it reflects how we actually work. We were not interested in creating distance, but in building relationships. Showing who we are, how we work—even in moments of fatigue, difficulty, and joy—makes the festival more accessible and more real.
The line, if there is one, is never to betray respect for the artists’ work and for the audience. We can be informal, but not superficial; ironic, but not cynical.
Provocation for its own sake does not interest us: when it is gratuitous, it betrays the narrative, the artists, and also those who follow us. Provocation, instead, as an artistic and political act capable of speaking to a broad audience and opening up reflection, is definitely part of our DNA.
Showing the backstage means bringing the audience into the process, not just placing them in front of the final result; it means sharing the construction of the festival, not only its official image. How important is the backstage today in the festival’s narrative? Is it just communication, or an integral part of the experience you want to build?
For us, the backstage is not just communication: it is part of the experience. Telling the process means acknowledging that a festival is not born already “finished,” but is made up of choices, attempts, mistakes, and relationships.
We receive many comments from the audience about the experience they have while moving through the more than thirty exhibitions of PhEST, spread across dozens of locations in Monopoli. But the experience we would really like to bring to the surface is that of building the festival, of the community that comes together to generate something alive.
Many people physically take part in this process by joining us; others do not have the possibility to do so: for them, the backstage becomes a precious way to tap into that energy, into that shared space that is PhEST, even from afar.
While remaining a photography festival, PhEST also presents installations and artistic interventions to broaden perspectives and enrich the interpretation of each edition’s themes. What is a non-photographic project that, in your opinion, has significantly enriched the theme of a recent edition?
In reality, we think of each edition as a journey, trying to anticipate the trajectories of the audience, almost as if it were a film, made up of scenes that follow one another and dialogue together. In this sense, rethinking the role of a major non-photographic exhibition like Goya’s Caprichos was fundamental. Bringing the 80 original Caprichos from the Valencia Museum to Monopoli was not an “exceptional” or disconnected gesture, but something that made a lot of sense within the overall narrative. In the edition This Is Us – A Capsule to Space, there was Martin Parr with his latest major exhibition and Goya, and it was interesting to see how, placed side by side, they spoke very directly about humanity, offering two vast and complex catalogues of who we are. Parr did so through images that tell the end of the twentieth century, Goya looked at the end of the eighteenth century, yet both seemed to speak exactly about the present. That temporal gap, paradoxically, made them even closer and more complementary. It was one of those moments when you realize you are not simply “adding” something to photography, but truly expanding the edition’s perspective.
Music has become an eagerly awaited presence at openings and festival events: it helps create atmosphere and define a sensory narrative that accompanies the images. How do you select the artists, and how does music connect to the festival’s visual storytelling?
Music is a central part of the festival for us; it is often the moment when everything truly comes alive. It is where different audiences meet, cross their interests, and begin to share the PhEST experience. This happens during opening days, but also throughout the months the festival is open and during closing moments. We look for musical artists who share the spirit of PhEST, who can help us tell its story in sound as well. Music is never decorative: we select it carefully, just as we do with all visual artists, based on an affinity of vision. With some musicians, we have created events of true synesthesia. I’m thinking, for example, of C’mon Tigre, whose project already has a very strong visual component: with them, the concert becomes a sort of live exhibition of the festival. The large LED wall behind them transforms the performance into something halfway between cinema, theatre, and music—a kind of secular, collective celebration. Other artists, instead, help us keep alive the more festive dimension of PhEST or propose forms of musical research to our audience. Over the years we have hosted Bombino, Clap! Clap!, Populous, LNDFK, Bruno Belissimo, Protopapa, and each has contributed to creating a different emotional climate, always coherent with the festival, helping to transform it into a collective ritual—an experience that does not pass only through sight, but also through the body, shared time, and presence.
An open call has value when it truly opens paths for those who participate, when it offers concrete opportunities beyond the simple chance of being selected and exhibited during the festival. What is the advantage that the PhEST call offers to photographers who decide to apply?
The PhEST Pop-Up Open Call has existed for 5 years and has grown significantly, also thanks to collaborations with international platforms such as LensCulture and PhMuseum, which allow us to reach a broad, diverse, and truly global community. In the latest edition, for example, we received over 800 projects from 64 different countries—a figure that clearly reflects the breadth and quality of the dialogue the call has generated.
The formula is intentionally simple: the call remains open for a very short period, usually a couple of weeks, so that communication stays focused and does not disperse across distant deadlines. We always connect it directly to the edition’s theme, which means that projects arrive already conceived to dialogue with the festival’s vision, resulting in a very strong response, especially in terms of quality.
Some selected projects are chosen directly by platforms such as LensCulture and PhMuseum, which offer authors publication on their channels. This is a very concrete opportunity, as it guarantees enormous international visibility and entry into important professional circuits.
The main prize remains the opportunity to realize an exhibition within the PhEST edition, making the project directly accessible to PhEST’s broad audience. Over the years, we have realized that the open call was becoming an increasingly central tool in building the program—a backbone of PhEST—which is why we will bring the launch of the call forward, moving it from May to March, with the idea of selecting projects that are ever more central to the edition under development. In any case, it is never conceived as an endpoint, but as a beginning: for those selected, it means entering a solid curatorial context, gaining real visibility, and starting to build relationships that often continue even after the festival.
Even when one is not selected, a festival can still become a point of reference if it keeps dialogue and opportunities for exchange open. What happens to photographers who are not selected? Do you have initiatives or ways to maintain a dialogue with them as well?
We genuinely try to keep the dialogue open, even if it is not always possible to do so in a structured or continuous way. For us, the open call is not only a selection tool, but also—and perhaps above all—an observation tool. It allows us to understand what is happening, which research paths are emerging, and which directions authors are taking. We follow the work of many photographers even after the call. Some return in subsequent years with more mature projects, others reappear in different contexts, perhaps in dialogue with themes we are addressing in other editions. It is not uncommon for a project that was not selected one year to find space later, when the time is right. In this sense, PhEST does not want to be a rigid filter, but a point of passage, a place where trajectories intersect. Even when one does not immediately enter the program, the dialogue remains open.
Evaluating projects means understanding not only the quality of the work, but also whether it can truly dialogue with the festival’s identity and vision. When you assess projects submitted to the open call, what is the criterion that makes you understand that a work truly fits the spirit of PhEST?
It is never just a question of formal quality. That is important, of course, but it is not enough. A project truly works for PhEST when it manages to question something, when it does not merely show, but opens up questions instead of closing them. We are interested in risk, research, the feeling that there is an authentic process behind it and not a “correct” response to the theme. A work convinces us when it can dialogue with the edition’s theme without illustrating it in a didactic way, without over-explaining, leaving room for ambiguity and interpretation. Ultimately, our criterion is very simple: if, when looking at a project, we spontaneously think “what if…?”, if it pushes us to imagine something different or to reconsider our point of view, then we know it is on the right path to entering the spirit of PhEST.
