The best photography exhibitions to see in Italy right now

Le Stanze della Fotografia launches the first chapter of a trilogy of exhibitions dedicated to the great American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, which will continue in 2026 with two further stages in Milan and Rome. The Venice exhibition, curated by Denis Curti, focuses on the classical dimension of Mapplethorpe's photography. From the collages and ready-mades of the 1960s to the portraits of Patti Smith, Lisa Lyon, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Yoko Ono, and Isabella Rossellini, passing through the famous male and female nudes, while the flowers—calla lilies, orchids, tulips—reveal a restrained and at the same time poetic eroticism. Also on display are rare archival materials and personal items from the Mapplethorpe Foundation, such as letters, invitations, records, magazines, and a precious illustrated edition of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell. A body of evidence that illuminates the network of relationships, influences, and passions that fueled his aesthetic vision, restoring the complexity of an author who transformed photography into a universal language of the body and desire.

Ten years after its opening, Camera – Italian Center for Photography in Turin celebrates American photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977) with a major retrospective curated by Walter Guadagnini. On display are over one hundred and sixty photographs from the Lee Miller Archives, many of which have never been seen before, reflecting the intensity and depth of the work of one of the most fascinating figures in the history of contemporary photography – also portrayed by Kate Winslet in the 2023 film Lee Miller. The exhibition traces her artistic career from the 1930s to the 1950s: from her surrealist beginnings in Paris alongside Man Ray, with whom she experimented with solarization, to her travels in Egypt and her sophisticated fashion shoots for Vogue. Her reportage of World War II is unforgettable, including images of the liberation of concentration camp prisoners. The exhibition tells the story of a free and daring photographer who made her life a continuous act of creativity and historical testimony.

Autumn in Milan lights up with Man Ray: the major exhibition at Palazzo Reale, Man Ray. Forms of Light, brings together almost three hundred works by the great genius of surrealism. Curated by Pierre-Yves Butzbach and Robert Rocca, the exhibition traces the creative universe of Emmanuel Radnitsky, aka Man Ray— the master who transformed photography into pure art. Original prints, collages, drawings, sculptures, films, and ready-mades recount a career spanning Paris and New York, Dada and Surrealism, in dialogue with Duchamp, Éluard, Tzara, and Aragon. Alongside the famous Noire et blanche and Le Violon d'Ingres, the exhibition explores technical inventions—rayographs and solarizations—and his contribution to fashion, with names such as Schiaparelli, Poiret, and Chanel. Muses and companions, from Kiki de Montparnasse to Lee Miller, animate a journey that intertwines art, desire, and experimentation. Each image becomes a metamorphosis of reality, an alchemy between form and light, testimony to a radically modern and boundless idea of art.

Centered around the theme of memento mori, Viviane Sassen's exhibition at the Maramotti Collection, on view until November 16, 2025, explores the infinite nuances of life and its intrinsic fragility. Bodies, landscapes, organic matter, and dust become symbols of transformation and memory in a fragmented, dreamlike visual journey that intertwines reality and imagination. In dialogue with the sculptures in the collection, the works—taken from different series and reworked as an ongoing research project—reveal the sculptural nature of Sassen's photography: light and shadow as plastic material, vibrant colors, pictorial interventions, and collages. Her images, suspended between dream and unease, show hybrid bodies, lush vegetation, and changing forms, blending eros and transience.

Until February 1, 2026, Palazzo Roverella will host the first Italian retrospective dedicated to New York photographer Rodney Smith (1947–2016). Curated by Anne Morin, the exhibition presents over one hundred images that showcase the elegance and formal precision of an artist capable of communicating with irony and grace, retracing his search for harmony between light and form, between reality and dream, according to thematic sections. As a theology student at Yale, where he trained as a photographer under the guidance of Walker Evans, Smith reinvented fashion and art photography, constructing worlds suspended between elegance, humor, and spirituality, where each shot becomes an act of contemplation and wonder.

In the historic setting of the Filatoio di Caraglio, the exhibition Helmut Newton. Intrecci tells the story of one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century, Helmut Newton, a controversial master renowned for his bold and provocative images. Curated by the Helmut Newton Foundation, the exhibition presents over one hundred photographs, including famous and unpublished shots, created during collaborations with major brands such as Yves Saint Laurent, Blumarine, Wolford, and many others. The title refers to the intertwining threads of Newton's work over the decades: creative relationships with models and designers, the interplay between irony and sensuality, and a symbolic return to his origins in textile photography, in keeping with the history of the Filatoio. The exhibition dialogues ideally with the other exhibition currently on display at the Filatoio, dedicated to the master Ferdinando Scianna, Ferdinando Scianna. Fashion, Life, offering two complementary visions of fashion photography.

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Paolo Di Paolo (1925–2023), Genoa celebrates the great photographer with the exhibition Paolo Di Paolo. Found Photographs, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Silvia Di Paolo, from October 23, 2025, to April 6, 2026. The exhibition brings together over three hundred images, many of which are unpublished and in color, along with magazines, documents, and archival materials, and restores the voice of an author who recounted postwar Italy and its rebirth with great sensitivity. Among the protagonists of his famous shots are figures from the world of cinema and art, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Anna Magnani, and Sofia Loren. A symbolic photographer for the weekly magazine Il Mondo, edited by Mario Pannunzio, Di Paolo captured the human and cultural face of a changing Italy. After his retirement, the archive was forgotten, but thanks to the work of his daughter Silvia, it has been rediscovered, helping to reveal the poetic modernity and narrative power of Paolo Di Paolo's photos.

Luigi Ghirri. Polaroid '79–'83, curated by Chiara Agradi and Stefano Collicelli Cagol, in collaboration with the Luigi Ghirri Foundation, is the first Italian exhibition entirely dedicated to the Polaroid work of the famous Emilian photographer, bringing together shots taken between 1979 and 1983, including those produced in Amsterdam with the Polaroid 20x24. The images show an experimental Ghirri who embraces the immediacy of the snapshot without sacrificing conceptual reflection. Between memory, objects, and landscapes, the exhibition highlights the dialogue between analog photography and digital culture, offering a new and contemporary perspective on the master's work.