Photography Exhibition “IMAGINARY CITIES”
CATEGORY: SERIES
Author: Fahredin Spahija
Country: Kosovo
Title of Series: “Winter”
Place: Prishtina
Description: Winter is shrouding this imaginary city in silence. The sights that appear through the steamed glass are dim, like memories that have never been experienced. The light breaks in the white mist, while the silhouettes of people move slowly. The footprints on the snow are quickly erased, as if they want to preserve the mystery of those who have passed there. This city does not speak with sound, but with feeling – a mixture of inner warmth and outer cold, of reality and dream. In this winter landscape, anything is possible, everything is just imagination…
Links of the author:
Author: Christian Lorenz
Country: Germany
Title of Series: “Different Light - A City in Infrared“
Place: Leipzig, Germany
Description: The series shows places in the city of Leipzig captured with an infrared-modified camera. This method reduces the available colors in the picture and has the highest effect on green plants, which shine bright and colorful in the final images.
Title 1: Cloud. This photo shows a single fluffy cloud over a major building with structured metal and glass fassade. The reduction of colors increased the contrast of straight man-made and natural, organic shapes.
Title 2: Boat. Leipzig's south has wonderful channelsm, also leading directly alognside of major buildings. These three ladies were enjoying themselves in a boat on a bright summer day. I especially liked that each of the ladies wore the same hat.
Title 3: Lollipop. The photo shows the city's archive. The round trees in front appear like giant lollipops and build a strong contrats to the rectilinear architecture.
Title 4: Monument. Europe's highest monument is located in Leipzig and remembers to the 1813 Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of the Nations. The lake in front mirrors the monument whereas the deposits on the water's surface appear like stars in the night sky.
Links of the author:
Website:http://randomcitylights.net
Author: Maria Laura Strini
Country: Italy
Title of Series: “Istanbul Layers“
Place: Istanbul
Description: Istanbul is the experience of a multitude of layers, sensations, people and traditions, shapes and colors, activities, goods, and natural elements, that meet, merge, run parallels, create geometries that overlap with those of the city. Istanbul is land, sea, then again land and sea together. The intent of this series is to convey the idea of Istanbul as a layered imaginary city. I took all the photos in Istanbul in April 2025, with a Fujifilm XT-20, using the double exposure technique. The description of each photo is an extract from the Invisible cities:
Title 1. Eminonu Square from the Galata bridge. “It is pointless to determine whether Zenobia is to be classified among the happy cities or among the unhappy ones. It is not into these two categories that it makes sense to divide the cities, but into two others: those that continue through the years and mutations to give their shape to desires and those in which desires either succeed in erasing the city or are erased from it.”
Title 2. Sultanahmet Mosque. ”Andria was built with such art that each of its streets runs following the orbit of a planet and the buildings and places of common life repeat the order of the constellation and the position of the brightest stars.”
Title 3. Sirkeci Station, Orient Express last stop. “Cities like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals another.”
Title 4. Bosphorus ferry. ”Cities like dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamt, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus hiding either a desire or its reverse, a fear. Cities like dreams are built of desires and fears.”
Links of the author:
Instagram:http://www.instagram.com/emmellestrini
Author: Elisa Villaverde
Country: Italy
Title of Series: “La somma”
Place: Torino
Description: The work is a reflection that starts from a quote from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities": It is the desperate moment in which we discover that this empire that seemed to us the sum of all wonders is an endless and formless ruin.
Italo Calvino's words sparked a project born from the desire to photographically express what the city is for me, a place that simultaneously attracts and repels me. The reference to Calvino's enigmatic world motivated the creation of this project, inspiring me to develop a photographic language capable of arousing questions and ambiguity in viewers. This black-and-white photographic project focuses on urban details, geometries,
and the marks left by man, using close-up and sometimes top-down perspectives to create a cyclical tension throughout the sequence. I wanted to capture moments of disharmony and ambiguity, such as the crack in the concrete caused by roots, the black hole in the asphalt, or the black stain formed behind a glass window, which almost seems to suggest the figure of a black hole intent on attracting you. These images are intended to evoke a dissonant sense of disorientation, reflecting the complex emotions associated with life in a big city.
Links of the author:
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/ilmondo_e_infinito/
Author: Betty Goh
Country: Singapore
Title of Series: “Subconscious“
Place: Singapore
Description: In the city’s restless rhythm, we drift between awareness and absence. Subconscious captures fleeting moments shaped by pressure, disconnection, movement, and memory. This series reflects the tension between our forward-driven lives and the emotions we suppress beneath—what we miss, what follows us, and what flickers through unnoticed. Beneath neon lights and shifting shadows, the subconscious speaks.
"In Between": In the heart of the city, people move through layers of light and shadow—unsure, in‑between, quietly searching for meaning amidst the noise.
"Under Pressure" : Beneath the city’s surface, pressure builds. We walk fast, breathe shallow—haunted by unseen weights, trapped in a rhythm we can’t escape.
"Neon Pulse" : Motion sparks through concrete veins. In this neon storm, life surges forward—unrelenting, alive, unstoppable.
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Author: Polina Schneider
Country: Deutschland
Title of Series: “Bench Mensch“
Place: Hannover
Description: This photo series was taken during the first Corona lockdown period in Hanover between March and June 2020. During this time I often looked out the living room window and had observed that the bench across the street quickly transformed to some center of social life of my neighborhood: Friends, acquaintances, newly in love, parents with children, children without parents - everyone met at this very bench and spent there either a few brief moments, or sometimes even a whole evening; sitting, talking, walking around in circles, putting down groceries, playing around, or simply hanging out for reading, smoking or drinking. In June 2020, however, the bench was dismantled due to road works.
Links of the author:
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/polisnaps/
Author: Alessandro Guzzeloni
Country: Italy
Title of Series: “Still City“
Place: Beijing and Shanghai, PRC
Description: In recent years, China has undergone an unprecedented urban transformation, characterized by rapid development, towering skyscrapers, and sprawling infrastructure. This transformation is most evident in its major cities, each with its unique blend of historical and modern architecture. In large cities, there is a push towards the spectacularization of urban transformations, culminating in the iconic architecture of the 2000s aimed at redefining the image and narrative of contemporary China. The architectural diversity is a visual narrative of China’s complex history and its rapid modernization, and not only documents the physical changes but also offers insights into the cultural and social shifts.
Links of the author:
Website: https://www.aguzz.net/
Author: Lucien Samaha
Country: United States of America
Title of Series: “The World is not a Rectangle“
Place: Switzerland, France, USA
Description: We are trapped in so many conventions in photography and otherwise. We always assume that a photograph is quadrilateral, if not exactly a square or a rectangle. In my pursuit of often looking for new ways to imagine urban spaces, I experiment with various modes of capture and post production. One day I serendipitously discovered that the panoramic stitching feature in Lightroom offered to keep the original stitching without cropping the exterior areas in order to yield what else? a rectangle. Once I learned the nuances of this tool, I began to photograph panoramic landscapes while slightly varying the angle of the camera specifically to produce these non rectangular images.
1) Mulhouse, France
2) Manhattan, NYC, USA
3) Paris, France
4) Geneva, Switzerland
Links of the author:
Website: http://www.luciensamaha.net
IMAGINARY CITIES 8th edition Online Photography Exhibition 2025, CATEGORY SINGLE