The exhibition presents 55 unpublished photographs , donated by the Japanese artist to the Modena Foundation, the result of a lyrical vision of what remained in Pompeii, the day after the eruption of 79 AD.

Modena consolidates its privileged relationship with photography, which has led it to become one of the reference points in Italy for this particular form of expression, capable of influencing the entire cultural life of the city, thanks to the contribution of institutions such as the Galleria Civica and the Modena Photography Foundation, both merged into the Modena Visual Arts Foundation in 2017.

In one of its locations, FMAV - MATA, the Modena Visual Arts Foundation presents a highly suggestive exhibition dedicated to Pompeii from 6 December 2019 to 13 April 2020, curated by Chiara Dall'Olio and Daniele De Luigi. The exhibition is co-promoted by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii which for the occasion will lend some reproductions of the famous plaster casts of the victims of the eruption and which will subsequently host it in its exhibition spaces.

The protagonist is the Japanese photographer Kenro Izu (Osaka, 1949), who has always been fascinated by the vestiges of ancient civilizations that led him to create series of images inside the most important and well-known archaeological sites in the world, from Egypt to Cambodia. from Indonesia to India, from Tibet to Syria.

In Modena, Kenro Izu presents Requiem for Pompei , a project started in 2015, in collaboration with Fondazione Fotografia Modena, dedicated to the city of Campania destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and buried under ash and lapilli. Archaeological excavations have returned not only the buildings, but also the exact shapes of the bodies of the inhabitants at the moment of death, thanks to the casts made on the voids they left under the petrified blanket.

The exhibition offers a selection of 55 unpublished images, donated by Kenro Izu to the Modena Foundation, taken in the ruins of Pompeii, where the artist has placed, with a poetic gesture of pity, copies of the original casts of the bodies that stand out like white human silhouettes.