The Pirelli Foundation at Archivi Aperti 2024

The Pirelli Foundation partecipated at Archivi Aperti (“Open Archives”) 2024, the annual event organised by Rete Fotografia. This gathering serves as a platform for dialogue and interaction between organisations committed to promoting and advancing photography. The 10th edition of Archivi Aperti, took place from 11 to 20 October 2024, centred around the theme of “Photography and Publishing”. This theme invited reflection on the dissemination of photographic culture, highlighting the importance of specialist libraries and the various forms in which photography is published: from photographic catalogues and trade magazines to educational volumes, corporate house organs, and today’s world of digital editions.

Our contribution, Exercises in Style: Sports Photography and the Publishing World, from the Pirelli House Organs to The Sports Workshop, examined the interplay between photography and publishing. It draws on images from the Pirelli Historical Archive, which were originally commissioned or acquired for company periodicals such as Pirelli magazine, Fatti e Notizie, and Vado e Torno. These images are now being used to illustrate the many different sporting arenas that feature in The Sports Workshop, the Pirelli Foundation’s latest publication. Visitors were accompanied through the spaces of the Foundation’s new exhibition, and learned about the process of bringing these photographic collections to life. The works, which were originally created for the company’s house organs, are now featured in a new book published by Marsilio Arte, available in bookstores since June