© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Francesca Catastini, “Medusa” dalla serie “The Modern Spirit is Vivisective”

When and why did you start cultivating the idea of ​​a photography collection, and how does this more generally relate to your interest in photography?

DP: In Venice, in 1979 I participated in the great event "La Fotografia" as an assistant to several workshops attended by important American photographers. A founding moment of passion, an opportunity to raise knowledge, and for an exchange. Different worlds were meeting, a true model, and an inspiration for my future. 

Your collection stands out for focusing on works by female photographers. A precise and clear goal that makes the collection important and special not only in Italy but also abroad. How was your choice received and matured?

DP: In 2012, for family reasons, I moved back to Milan after many years in Rome. I still wanted to work in photography, which in the meantime had experienced the transition to digital, the crisis of printed paper, and had come out battered by the crisis of 2008, with cuts throughout the sector. The printing laboratories shutting down, less and less employment among newspapers and traditional magazines, publishers on the run. 

At that point, I thought about how I could make a contribution, and the idea of ​​collecting struck me: I would have bought works by Italian photographers and I would have tried to promote them, in Italy and especially abroad. The images that immediately seemed essential to me, for example, the series of "I Travestiti" by Lisetta Carmi and "Mondo Cocktail" by Carla Cerati, contain in a nutshell all the sense that the collection then developed, but above all, they are the works of women photographers. So I started to research and study, to contact the photographers and very quickly the path developed, first in a chronological sense. The definition of a restricted area of ​​research allowed me to show more effectively the originality and the variety of the Italian contribution to the history of photography.

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Lisetta Carmi, from the series “I Travestiti”, 1965-1970, ink-jet print 2017

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Carla Cerati, “Cocktail per l’inaugurazione del negozio di Willy Rizzo e Nucci Valsecchi”, Milano 1971, from the series “Mondo Cocktail”

The collection covers a significant range of Italian photography. It includes the names of photographers who made history but also the work of emerging young artists. Tell us about the curatorial choices? What criteria did you adopt? How is the selection made? Have you involved other curators?

DP: The collection had a first great opportunity with the exhibition at the Milan Triennale in 2015-2016. On this occasion, I realized my ideal project: to create content privately, and therefore autonomously, using a public institutional container, so as to obtain visibility and impact that would otherwise be impossible. Of course, the balance must be carefully calibrated, through the guarantee of a scientifically credible curation.

I had discovered a small text on the net, which proved to be fundamental "Art photography and feminism in Italy in the seventies" and I immediately contacted the author a young researcher of Sapienza, Raffaella Perna to whom I owe the knowledge of most of the authors in the feminism section. It was, therefore, Raffaella who set up the exhibition, with the title "The Other Look, Italian Photographers 1965-2015" and four sections: "Inside the Stories", "What do you think of Feminism?", "Identity and Relationship", "See Beyond". The sections overlap the chronological path and identify different recurring themes and genres in the collection, from b/w reportage to the work of feminists of different generations, to the conceptual works of the younger artists. In the case of the exhibition at the Triennale, a fundamental contribution to the success of the initiative came from teaching, guided visits, talks, seminars masterfully curated by MUFOCO (Museum of Contemporary Photography). Perna also curated the exhibition with the same title at the Palazzo Delle Esposizioni in Rome (2018) with the same sections, enriched by new acquisitions and a particular emphasis on feminism. She later curated other exhibitions on feminism and photography, always involving me and using many works from the collection.

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Giovanna Borgese, “Le ragazze di Prima Linea”, Torino, 1981dalla serie “Un paese in tribunale”, Italia 1980-1983

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Alessansdra Spranzi “Cose che accadono #12”, 2002-2005

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Marinella Senatore, “The new feminism”, 2016, collage, acrylic and gold ink, archive materials on vegetal cardboard

Another interesting experience was curated by Silvia Camporesi, in the role of director of the SIFEST 26 festival in Savignano in 2017, which entitled the selection "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts", preferring the more contemporary part of the collection, to demonstrate how the photography has broken the barriers of pure representation to become a powerful tool for artistic investigation.

You recently brought the collection to Germany, to a prestigious venue such as the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. Tell us about this initiative, the feedback on the exhibition and your relationship with the curator Alessandra Capodacqua...

DP: I met Alessandra Capodacqua at SIFEST (Savignano Immagini Festival), where she was called to be part of the artistic committee. After a public meeting with Francesca Fabiani from the Department of Contemporary Art and Architecture of the Ministry of Culture, Alessandra invited me to present the collection to a talk hosted by the New York University to Villa la Pietra in Florence. On that occasion, I asked her if she was interested in promoting the collection abroad through her network of contacts, ORACLE in particular. Through ORACLE, we arrive at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, via Celina Lundsford that we had invited to visit the exhibition at the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia, an exhibition organized by the Festival in 2019 with the title "Behind the lens, Italian Photographers 1965-2019", a selection curated again by Alessandra Capodacqua.

The collection certainly offers numerous perspectives on the world from a woman's point of view, and on the world of women. Those who go through your collection make a sort of "journey through time", retracing important moments in the evolution of the role of women in the Italian society, as much in the country itself. From your personal observatory, how has this role changed, and consequently society from the 1960s to today?

DP: I see with satisfaction that the exhibits in the collection have all had great, surprising, and supportive public success. Certainly, there is an emptiness of knowledge to be filled on female art, but even more, all the works in the collection seem to stimulate the continuous struggle, the need to keep the attention on the presence of women high and constant. Even today, despite the progress made over the past 50 years ago, there is still much to recover. All the authors in the collection are committed through their work in the most diverse ways to make their world and everyone's life better.

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Moira Ricci, “Mamma stira”, from the series “20.12.53-10.08.04”, 2004-2014

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Paola Mattioli, “Cosa ne pensi del movimento femminista?”, 1974, gelatin silver bromide print, mirror, card with pencil writing

© Courtesy Collezione Donata Pizzi, Martina Cirese, “Asher”, 2017 from the series “Do Women Dream of Synthetic Kids?”

All the works speak of social, civil and political commitment, they do it in a provocative or ironic way and this I believe is the most evident characteristic of the collection; the red thread that binds distant works overtime, made by women who have lived a society that has changed radically in the meantime. I have always preferred militant art and photography is for this a flexible and formidable tool.

The pioneering and courageous work of photographers such as Lisetta Carmi or Letizia Battaglia has also shown many young photographers a 'possibility', clearing a profession that in part still seems to be the prerogative of the males ... In the meantime, photography has changed, and with it the use and the way to spread it. The scenario is increasingly competitive. It seems to me that there is no shortage of brilliant photographers and visual artists? What is the challenge for your collection?

DP: Yes I agree with you, we continue to discover amazing talents. I think we are in a moment of maturity for photography, no longer conditioned by conceptual or technical limitations and this allows sophisticated and very fascinating research. For some time now I have seen the best galleries in the world treating photography like other media. I hope that more and more contemporary art museums will develop their departments so as to definitively include photography as an integral part of the exhibition system.

© Courtesy Collezione Donata Pizzi, Letizia Battaglia, “Triplice omicidio, Nerina e i suoi amici”, Palermo, 1982

I know that your collection is in great demand abroad too. I wonder what "lessons" you learned in promoting the collection. And, maybe, if you have any advice for those approaching collections?

DP: I always thought that photography should be very protected, literally. This means choosing to move within a high-level circuit, looking for contacts with accredited institutions and personalities, of course, being able to present themselves equally professionally. As we are seeing in Frankfurt, the public reacts to the strength and originality of the images selected by the curator Celina Lundsford, to how they are presented without necessarily having to know the history of Italian society of the last 50 years and above all not knowing any of the photographers, whose names are mostly little known even in Italy.

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Alba Zari, from the series “The Y – Research of Biological Father”, 2016 – 2017

© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Silvia Camporesi, “L’isola di San Michele” 2011 dalla serie “Fantasmi # 5”

© Courtesy Collezione Donata Pizzi, Paola Agosti, “Salvador Gilli con la figlia Gloria”, Las Varillas, 1990, dalla serie, “El Paraíso: entrada provisoria”, gelatin silver print

I would say that to achieve success, consistency, and seriousness, study and passion are needed, obviously including all the authors and curators who have collaborated in the exhibitions. In recent years I have seen gallery owners capable of proposing young artists but also of re-evaluating historical artists. All this while not discounted pieces start to arrive in auctions, a good sign for the market.

I also wonder about the social impact of the collection in a time when it's easy to place labels, "tags", on such issues. It also becomes easy to exploit or diminish certain initiatives. As a collector, I wonder how you can defend your collection but at the same time enhance it?

DP: I defend myself by being independent, I have invested heavily in the collection, time, study, and finances, but I am free to include only works in which I believe, which amaze me. Works that have their sense and strength, and that simultaneously grow in importance as they build the structure of the entire collection. I had the impression at some point that the whole was even self-forming, so all the works now seem essential to me, but at the same time, the idea is to leave freedom, indeed to solicit, the curator to use even only individual images for other projects.


© Courtesy of Collezione Donata Pizzi, Anna Di Prospero, “Self-portrait with my mother”, 2011 from the series “Self Portrait with my family”, 2016

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Collezione Donata Pizzi 
Urbanautica Italy