EXPOSED TORINO PHOTO FESTIVAL | 'True Colors'

EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, the new international festival of photography in Turin dedicated to the theme New Landscapes - Nuovo Paesaggi, which aims to explore the future of photography as a means of picturing and designing future scenarios that are viable and ecologically sustainable.

Through a rich palimpsest of temporary exhibitions, public meetings and an art book fair - among the scheduled activities made possible by a joint planning with Turin's main cultural institutions - EXPOSED represents a concrete opportunity to question the ways in which photography has been produced and understood so far. To do so we need new languages and new forms of collaboration capable of making the most of the immediacy and enviable power of representation proper to the photographic medium, with a view to building and defining the world of tomorrow.

True Colors, by Mathieu Asselin, inspired by the Dieselgate scandal, questions the contemporary industry’s deceptive ecological narrative. The project recontextualizes the industry’s own visual marketing tools, including photography, video, advertising and archival material, to reveal the stark contrast between its professed environmental narrative and actual practices. It prompts us to reexamine our relationship with cars against the backdrop of today’s pressing environmental issues and to critically evaluate the industry’s unsustainable, individualistic and production-oriented vision of the future of human mobility.

Dieselgate

In 2014, it was revealed that Volkswagen was using software to circumvent air pollution tests in certain car models, which was a major scandal in the automotive industry. When this software detected standardized emissions tests, it modified the engine to reduce emissions only during the tests. However, under real driving conditions, these vehicles emitted much higher levels of pollutants. This discovery caused great outrage and exposed similar fraudulent practices at other car manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Renault, Fiat and Jeep.

On show at Villa della Regina, Turin, Italy. Curated by Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo.