100 PHOTOS TO INHERIT THE WORLD, Exhibition MUDEC - Museum of Cultures, Milan

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100 PHOTOS TO INHERIT THE WORLD

From 7 March to 28 June 2026

MUDEC - Museum of Cultures

Via Tortona, 56, Milan

Closed now: open at 09:30

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The photograph represents a language that preserves the world, conserving memory, revealing transformations, returning wounds, rebirths, changes, hopes. It is fascination, knowledge, lies and truth together, a tool capable of telling what we have been, what we are, and what we can become. It is the language of contemporaneity and, at the same time, the visual memory of humanity. From this awareness arises the photographic exhibition 100 photographs to inherit the world, which is not configured as a simple anthology of masterpieces, but as a journey that invites reflection on the visual and cultural heritage that photography has transmitted to us. The concept of "inheriting the world", from which the subtitle of the exhibition, translates into a reflection on our time: a complex present, crossed by technological transformations, environmental crises, hybrid conflicts, new identities, and an unprecedented visual saturation. In this scenario, photography becomes a tool to orient oneself, to build awareness, to find a place in collective memory. The selection of the 100 photographs - a necessary choice to circumscribe a vast visual territory - does not respond to hierarchies among historical, aesthetic, political, or cultural values: each image is part of a unique collective heritage. The curatorial choice thus defines a journey through the history of mankind through what photography has been able to see, preserve, and transform. Structured in six sections, the exhibition spans two centuries of the history of photography, from the early experiments, including the magic lantern and daguerreotypes, to the transition to modernity, when photography ceases to be a simple testimony of reality and becomes a territory of invention thanks to the avant-gardes of the twentieth century, with figures like Man Ray, Aleksandr Rodchenko, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Philippe Halsman, alongside the poetic research of Mario Giacomelli and the conceptual provocations of Joan Fontcuberta. From here, a broader narrative unfolds, in which photography becomes memory, introspection, metaphor, and a look towards the future, with images that have marked contemporary history - including Joel Meyerowitz's photographs at Ground Zero - revealing the power of the photographer as the "eye of the world", capable of transforming epochal events into collective memory. At the same time, the path highlights how authors such as Claude Cahun, Pierre Molinier, and Robert Mapplethorpe have instead transformed photography into an intimate diary, making the image a place of psychological and symbolic introspection. The photographic language then opens up to the evocative dimension, where reality is reinvented through fiction and staging, with the visions of Newsha Tavakolian, Sandy Skoglund, Nancy Burson, David LaChapelle, and Mat Collishaw, showing a photography capable of becoming a metaphor, a visionary tale, and an ethical reflection. Finally, contemporary authors propose new imaginaries of the 21st-century world, addressing directly and radically the themes that define our time: multiculturalism, gender issues, migrations, civil conflicts, environmental crises, and new models of belonging. The works of Ebrahim Noroozi, Carlos Ayest, Guillaume Bression, Gohar Dashti, Alba Zari, and Carlos Idun Tawiah thus reflect an unstable and hyperconnected present, where the real and the post-digital intertwine to imagine new possibilities.

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	opens - closes	last entry
monday	14:30 - 19:30
tuesday	09:30 - 19:30
wednesday	09:30 - 19:30
thursday	09:30 - 22:30
friday	09:30 - 19:30
saturday	09:30 - 19:30
sunday	09:30 - 19:30

100 PHOTOS TO INHERIT THE WORLD

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