Mimi Mollica - om när allt gick fel!

Mimi Mollica har blivit mest uppmärksammad för sina bilder från afrika, framför allt då Dakar där han genom att fotografera bygget av motorvägen mellan Dakar och Diamniado lyckats hitta en väg in i vardagen. Trött på bilden av en kontinent fylld av krig, naturkatastrofer och sjukdomar gav han sig ut att skildra det afrika som hela tiden finns där, en kontinent som dagligen måste hantera utveckling och strukturförändring. När det gäller utställningar ser han dem som ett utmärkt sätt att möta de som ser hans bilder. Bland mycket annat.

- Why do you choose to exhibit your pictures?

- To Divulge, reveal, publish my work and to promote myself. You see, there are many different ways to do so, with books, publications in magazine or newspapers, online platforms and more. Each of these methods are worlds apart and imply a different attitude towards the target viewer that observes your work. To me an exhibition means that I can turn a simple "disclosure" of my work into a complex and live experience, where I can actually meet in person the people that looks at my work and at the same time, through and opening event, you can glamourise such experience to network with influential people from the industry who hopefully would respond to your invitation.


- How do you plan an exhibition? Which are your thoughts regarding the room, number of pictures, printsizes, framing and so on?

- Each exhibition is different, you can never fix a set of standard coordinates. Depending on the work you wish to exhibit, you might prefer to go for large, extra-large or very small prints. this choice is usually influenced by the size of the venue, the budget and finally by the actual content of your subject matter.

- Can you mention an exhibition that you have produced that you are extra pleased with and why?

- I am very lucky as I have had several wonderful exhibitions, solo and collective, in London, Italy, France, New York and more. It can probably be more useful if I tell you about the one exhibition of which I am NOT at all happy. This happened in a major city in Italy (would prefer not to mention exactly where), together with a group of other well known Italian photographers, I was asked to produce three prints to be exhibited in a new hip gallery. The exhibition space was very very tiny, the works where profoundly different from one another and the only glue (which in my honest opinion didn't stick at all) between them was the fact that supposedly photojournalism is also an art. As to exhibit together Caravaggio, Picasso and Warhol to achieve the genius intuition that those guys where actually using colors to paint...!!!!!
The opening was a disaster! On a scruffy plastic table on offer was one or two bottles of wine and one three litre bottle of warm Coca-Cola. I haven't been introduced to none of the few editors present there and my work, elsewhere praise by The Guardian, BJP, Burn Magazine and so on, didn't receive any proper attention.
This was by far, the most single negative show I have ever (and will ever) took part of.

- When you see other photographers exhibitions, do you then think of what makes it so good exept for the images? What in that case could that be?

- Les Rencontres d'Arles or Visa Pour L'Image could be the perfect examples. The locations are absolutely magic, generally speaking the work exhibited is at the maximum standard, if not exceptional, and yet sometimes I share the same view of many who criticise some show of being senseless and very poor. There is no rule about this though. It might be a simple reason of taste or a wrong choice or someone who managed to get exhibited last minute to cover some gap...couldn't really tell. However this is not happening vary often in Arles or Perpignan, or London or NYC or Paris, but it's more likely to happen in places that lack of photographic culture or organisational skills or whatever else that is clearly missing.


- What exhibition have you seen lately that you liked?

Eyewitness at The Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, London. This is one of the most important and valid exhibitions I have ever seen in recent years.