Artist
Umberto Diecinove
Umberto Diecinove (b. 1978) is an Italian photographer who currently lives between Turin and Madrid. With an academic background in Literature and Philosophy, he works as a documentary photographer and filmmaker. Diecinove’s multimedia projects – made in collaboration with other artists – include P A R I S N E S S, HAIKU and Silencio.
I N S C T S
I N S C T S is an ongoing multimedia project that documents the solutions insect farming offers to global environmental and social challenges. Striving for a global overview, the project focuses on both the people working towards change and those who would benefit from it. Insects may be fed on organic waste, integrating it back into the system as biofertilizers and feed for animals that eat insects in their natural diet. Farming insects could make smallholder farmers less dependent on expensive - and environmentally costly - imported products: a pathway to community sovereignty. Additionally in industrial contexts insect farming is an emerging sector handling the increasing amount of organic waste, with the potential to lessen the environmental impact of the agri-industrial sector. A special chapter is dedicated to “Insectos Por La Paz”, a social initiative created by a young woman: Karol Barragàn Fonseca, that illustrates the change insect farming can promote in the Global South. The photographs were taken in research centers, farms, communities and companies in Europe (The Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal), Colombia, Thailand, Malaysia and in the U.S. (California and Texas).
During the shoots I also recorded audio interviews. Suitable for multimedia installations some of these conversations are published as a podcast “Get The Bug” available on all major platforms.
For the next phase of the project, I will travel to a series of countries where insects form part of the local diet. Incorporating archival material, I N S C T S will culminate in a photobook that charts the history of our perceptions of – and relationships with – insects.
Similarly, the five contemporary photographers PHotoESPAÑA is nominating for FUTURES this year are developing work that stands out on today’s scene, offering five different yet complementary perspectives that provide an overview of contemporary practices, ranging from documentary (Umberto Diecinove) to a type of expanded photography that incorporates performance (Monica Egido), to work with the photobook format (Irene Zottola) and conceptual photography (Laura San Segundo and Rita Puig-Serra Costa). In 2022, PHotoESPAÑA closely tracked these artists’ progress.
In her project Ícaro, published as a photo book in 2022, Irene Zottola uses photography to offer a mystical fable as a metaphor of the contemporary world. In FOMO, also from 2022, Mónica Egido uses a performative duel to represent the need to stop and observe ourselves silently for an extended period of time. In The Circular Enclosure, a project currently underway and started in 2023, Laura San Segundo resolves a succession of landscapes as mental sites where the dialogue takes place between photography and the subconscious and is capable of transcending the inherent meaning of an image or element. In Anatomy of an Oyster, started in 2018 and still underway, Rita Puig-Serra Costa uses the photographic image to formulate a first-person journey into the past, in an attempt to tell a story of violence and abuse silenced by time. Finally, in the ongoing project INSCTS, Umberto Dicienove sets out to document the potential change we can achieve with insects, providing a global view with a special focus on people working on this change and those who will benefit from it.
Mónica Egido and Umberto Diecinove developed their projects as part of our MA in photography and artistic projects – the festival’s training programme. Laura San Segundo and Rita Puig-Serra Costa stood out within the set of projects submitted to the Discoveries viewing programme. And the Irene Zóttola’s photobook Ícaro was chosen for the 2022 PHotoESPAÑA award for Best Photography Book of the Year.