{"id":775,"date":"2024-04-30T13:54:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T11:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/mostra\/robin-hinsch-kowitsch-eng\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T12:36:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T10:36:15","slug":"robin-hinsch-kowitsch-eng","status":"publish","type":"mostra","link":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/mostra\/robin-hinsch-kowitsch-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"Robin Hinsch, Kowitsch ENG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kowitsch \u2013 Lonely are all the Bridges<\/strong>, by German photographer Robin Hinsch<\/strong>, represents the fourth chapter of Homecoming<\/em>, an exhibition cycle dedicated to contemporary photography. The project was conceived by Irene Alison <\/strong>and curated by Irene Alison and Paolo Cagnacci<\/strong>. The event is organized in collaboration with Forma Edizioni<\/strong> and Infoto Firenze Association<\/strong>, with the support of Gruppo AF<\/strong> and Banca Ifigest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Is there still a possible way to photograph war? Is there a visual language capable of conveying trauma, violence, and conflict in a world saturated with images\u2014where the complexity of contemporary warfare seems to have outgrown the interpretative tools of traditional photojournalism? Does photography still carry a responsibility to question how we tell stories of pain? But above all: do images of horror make us more aware of the horrors we are capable of generating? And does this awareness help us, in any way, to prevent them?<\/p>\n

With Kowitsch \u2013 Lonely Are All The Bridges<\/em>, Robin Hinsch opens our eyes to the devastation of a war zone where only ruins remain. He does so with the clarity of someone who has chosen a side\u2014the side of the defeated\u2014and the humility of someone who has no absolute truths to proclaim, but knows how to take a stance of quiet listening.<\/p>\n

In his images\u2014part of a long-term investigation into the Ukrainian conflicts begun in 2010 and still ongoing\u2014war takes on the face of an exhausted soldier slumped on a bench, the outline of a ghostly snow-covered landscape, the jagged silhouette of a cathedral gutted by bombs. With this solo exhibition, the journey around the idea of home that underpins the Homecoming<\/em> cycle turns into a bitter reflection on the absence of any home left to return to: destroyed, bombed, abandoned, the houses in Kowitsch \u2013 Lonely Are All The Bridges<\/em> are inhabited only by ghosts.<\/p>\n

And yet, the frescoes Hinsch creates possess a hypnotic, vital beauty that goes beyond the mere contemplation of catastrophe. In the surreal silence that envelops them, they return to us all the echo of war\u2019s senselessness\u2014and all the fragile hope for a future that can take root even when \u201chome\u201d is nothing more than a pile of dust.<\/p>\n

We need these images. More than fifty years later, John Berger\u2019s 1972 critique of the \u201cphotography of agony\u201d\u2014that once the initial shock wears off, such images \u201close all political impact and become an accusation against everyone and no one\u201d \u2013 still resonates strongly. As does Susan Sontag\u2019s famous argument that the spectacle of others\u2019 suffering numbs us, and that \u201cthe vast photographic catalog of misery has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible appear more ordinary, familiar, distant, and inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But far from the (often) suffocating immediacy of photojournalism, Hinsch\u2019s images instead open a space for thought and understanding. They are no less painful than those that linger on the most unbearable atrocities of war, but in their slower tempo, in their apparent detachment, they show how awareness is a long process \u2013 and how history, often, can only teach us something when seen in perspective. As we look at them, we are stunned by the destruction they bear witness to \u2013 but precisely because they do not leave us breathless with horror, we are left with the breath to search within them for clues to help us understand the world we live in and the wars we are still fighting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1552,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"ciclo":[47,43],"class_list":["post-775","mostra","type-mostra","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ciclo-homecoming-en","ciclo-photography"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mostra\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mostra"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/mostra"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ciclo","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lab.rifugiodigitale.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ciclo?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}