Archivio naturale. Filippo Romano - Ikona Photo Gallery - Opening February 8, 2026, until April 12

Živa Kraus and Federico Piccaluga are pleased to present the exhibition "Archivio naturale" by Filippo Romano, on display at Ikona Gallery until April 12. Opening Sunday, February 8, 2026, at 11 a.m., in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, Cannaregio 2909, Venice.

Nazaré, Portogallo 2019

The power of photography lies in its ability to construct and offer our gaze alternatives to the reality that continuously flows through our lives, fixing—in a precise and indisputable shot—a possibility of the world around us that is both plausible and unsettling. That shot, that sharp and irremediable click, is a choice, often instinctive, which is later confirmed in post-production and the printing process to offer us a hypothesis of reality that has the power to remain snagged in our memory for a very long time.

Filippo Romano has always worked on potential archives of memories, both personal and collective, which have layered themselves within reality and endure, despite everything. These are living, unstable, and problematic archives that call upon the author to bring them to light, to further nourish the existence to which they belong. Filippo Romano’s photographic archives constantly view the world as a stratified ecosystem, both dense and fluid, where many forms of nature coexist—whether animal, mineral, aquatic, or vegetable—always in a necessary dialogue with the human element that invades, consumes, and regenerates everything.

This selection of images shows us each time how the particular and the universal can coexist within the same frame, allowing us to feel with precision the temperature of a specific place while simultaneously sensing a world common to us all. Each time, the gaze is subtle, predatory, and thinly ironic, yet each time the image digs deep and forces us to look askance at the eyes of Medusa, representing the era of pain and metamorphosis we are currently inhabiting. Each image thus becomes a light yet vital portolan chart to navigate beyond the mists, and at the same time, a stabilized fragment of reality that can accompany us on the journey.

Luca Molinari

FILIPPO ROMANO Born in 1968, he is a documentary and architectural photographer trained at I.S.I.A. in Urbino and I.C.P. in New York. He teaches in the photography master's programs at Naba and Iuav. The focus of his work is primarily on architecture, ways of urban living, and habitats in general. He has collaborated with Domus, Abitare, Io Donna, and many other Italian and international publications, as well as with various Italian and foreign architecture firms, such as Herzog & De Meuron, documenting the construction of the new Fondazione Feltrinelli headquarters in Milan. He collaborated with the Palladio Museum on the exhibition project Found in Translation regarding the architectures of Palladio and Jefferson, a project curated by architectural historian Guido Beltramini and exhibited at the C.C.A. in Montreal. Since 2011, he has been working on a long-term project on the city of Nairobi, The Nairobi Project. He has exhibited in three different editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2010, 2014, and 2021). In 2019, he collaborated with Fondazione Fabbri and Dolomiti Contemporanee on a photographic campaign regarding the effects of the Vaia storm. In 2024, under the curatorship of architectural historian Fulvio Irace, he documented the contemporary state of the architectures of Angelo Mangiarotti and Alessandro Mendini for the Triennale Milano Museum and conducted an editorial project for the publisher Marsilio Arte on the UNESCO Prosecco territory. His project Statale 106, an investigation into the territory of Ionian Calabria, was acquired in 2022 by MUFOCO (Museum of Contemporary Photography in Cinisello Balsamo). In November 2024, he completed the project Insulae Acqua on the island of Linosa, curated by Alessandra Klimciuk. In 2025, he participated with a photographic campaign in the exhibition Stadi: Architettura e Mito (Stadiums: Architecture and Myth) at the MAXXI Museum in Rome.

NATURAL ARCHIVE FILIPPO ROMANO Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, Cannaregio 2909, Venice From February 8 to April 12, 2026 Opening: February 8 at 11:00 a.m. Open from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. – Closed on Saturdays

IKONA GALLERY Campo del Ghetto Novo, Cannaregio 2909, Venice ikonavenezia.com