Fotomuseum in Maastricht presents Italian photographer Franco Zecchin

© Franco Zecchin - Brotherhood of Holy Crucifix. Palermo 1988


27 September 2025 – 25 January 2026

Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht, the Netherlands, presents an exhibition by Italian social documentary photographer Franco Zecchin from 27 September 2025 until 25 January 2026. The exhibition Life in Sicily features fifty iconic black-and-white photographs taken on the Italian island between 1975 and 1994. During this turbulent period, Sicily faced large-scale mafia violence, political corruption, and social inequality.

In 1975, Franco Zecchin moved to Palermo and began his career as a photojournalist for the daily newspaper L’Ora, paying particular attention to the influential mafia organization Cosa Nostra. The engaged photographer captured assassinations, funerals, protests, and the everyday reality of people trying to live in the shadow of this threat. Zecchin’s images reflect an island in crisis and the resilience of its inhabitants.

The photographer is considered one of the most important visual chroniclers of Sicily’s bloody mafia era. The exhibition offers a penetrating view of the struggle between organized crime, civil society, and government. The images also show the complexity of a society where violence and beauty often coexist uneasily. In 2019, a selection from this extensive photo series is bundled in the book Continente Sicilia.

Franco Zecchin (Milan, 1953) worked intensively with his partner, photographer, and anti-mafia activist Letizia Battaglia. From 1988 to 1991, he was an associate member of the Magnum Photos agency. The photographer explored themes of nomadism and religious feasts in the 1990s. Besides exhibitions in Europe and the United States, his internationally acclaimed work is included in the collections of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Since 2006, Zecchin has been living and teaching in Marseille.

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© Franco Zecchin - The 'Lapa', a popular and family car. Palermo 1980

© Franco Zecchin - Benedetto Grado's wife and daughters at the scene of his murder. The family was already mourning the son Antonio's murder. Palermo 1983


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Netherlands: ROBIN DE PUY ' Water & Meer'

From 15 June to 8 September 2024, the exhibition ‘Water & Meer’ by Robin de Puy will be on show at Museum Henriette Polak. 'Waters & Meer' shows a selection from the well-known photographer's recent projects Down By The Water (2022) and Waters (2023). The recognisability of her work and the impressive portraits she creates touch a wide audience. The exhibition was put together in close cooperation with Robin de Puy.

"The longer I don't travel, the more I dare to look at where I live. I see how my new surroundings take care of me. How the baker and the greengrocer bring my groceries to my door every Saturday morning. How all kinds of people call this their village, their neighborhood, their home. I see families who have lived here for generations, I see refugees, outcasts, and graduates, I see urban diversity mixed with a small village frame of mind."

Robin de Puy has lived for several years in Wormer, a small village surrounded by water just north of Amsterdam. She is fascinated by rural America and discovered during the recent lockdown that her new surroundings also turn out to be very universal, with the same kind of small-town local icons she has often encountered during her travels through the landscapes of America.

Robin de Puy; Ali and Saker #2, 2021

Robin de Puy (1986) studied at the Fotoacademie Rotterdam and has previously exhibited at institutions and galleries including the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2018), the Fotomuseum Den Haag (2016), the Stedelijk Museum Breda (2016) and Photoville, New York (2016). Among numerous other awards, De Puy won the National Portrait Prize in both 2013 and 2019. Her work is in important public and private collections, including the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; De Nederlandse Bank, Amsterdam; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Centraal Museum Utrecht, Utrecht; Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague. Photos by De Puy are very regularly published in De Volkskrant, among others, and in photo books.

The Mondriaan Fund, the public incentive fund for visual arts and cultural heritage, has made this exhibition possible.

The official opening of ‘Water & Meer’ will take place today June 14th from 15.00 to 17:00 at Museum Henriette Polak in Zutphen, the Netherlands. You can register for the opening using the button below.

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Amsterdam, NL: Santu Mofokeng Stories

February 15 - April 28, 2019
foam Fotografiemuseum
Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam
pressoffice@foam.org
www.foam.org

This year marks the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections, and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.

From the Series Train Church. Photograph by Santu Mofokeng (b.1956) © Santu Mofokeng Foundation. Image courtesy of Lunetta Bartz, MAKER, Johannesburg and Steidl GmbH.

South African photographer Santu Mofokeng (b. 1956) famously documented daily life during and after apartheid. Foam presents a large-scale retrospective, containing a selection of his most important visual essays and featuring many unpublished works from the artist’s private archives.

The exhibition Santu Mofokeng – Stories brings together a number of important photographic essays by Mofokeng made in his native South Africa. Amongst the series on show is his first and most celebrated visual essay Train Church (1986), portraying the spontaneous religious rituals that occurred on the Soweto-Johannesburg commuter train. Other (many yet unknown) images portray life in the townships of Soweto and Dukathole; political protests leading up to the abolition of apartheid, and the historic election of Nelson Mandela as president in 1994. Together, the series narrates how the rapidly changing political climate in South Africa affected daily life across the country. Raised in the township of Soweto, Mofokeng photographed South African communities from the inside, painting a nuanced and dynamic portrait of a complex society in transition.

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Amsterdam NL: Erwin Blumenfeld in Color

From 15 February, Foam will be showing the colour photography of the influential German photographer Erwin Blumenfeld.

Pat Blake for Vogue NY, 1954 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was born in Germany. He mastered photography in the Netherlands, where he shot portraits. After he went to Paris he built a career in fashion photography for a few years and he only worked in black and white. He liked to experiment with various techniques such as double exposure, distortion and solarisation. But from the moment that colour photography was introduced to the world, he transformed his original compositions in black and white into colour.

His special repertoire of shapes and colours that he developed after he left for the United States in 1941 made him one of the most original fashion photographers in New York. The female body and death were his main sources of inspiration. Despite the fashionable frivolity, he distinguished himself by the surreal nature of his subjects; the goal of his search was not realism, but the mystery of reality. He worked freelance for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Life and Vogue. The exhibition of his work in Foam focuses on colour photography that he developed in his period in New York (1941-1960) and gave him worldwide recognition.

The exhibition will be opened by granddaughter Nadia Blumenfeld-Charbit on 14 February 2019. You are welcome from 5.30pm onwards.

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"Rage for color", Look, October 15th, 1958.
(models from the left to right : Renée Breton, Tess Mall, Dolores Hawkins, Anne St. Marie, Bani Yelverton)
© The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

Netherlands: Foam Talent 19

Saturday 12 January marks the grand opening of Foam’s temporary new venue Foam Next Door, a former office space presenting the brand new Foam Talent 2019 exhibition with works from a new generation of visual artists.

Foam has had the unique opportunity to temporarily move into a large building on the Keizersgracht, two doors down from the museum. In Foam Next Door the exhibition Foam Talent 2019 is shown in a surprising way, in which the work of twenty selected artists provides insight into the state of contemporary photography.

The exhibition will be on show at Foam Next Door until 3 March 2019. The festive opening will take place on Saturday, 12 January 2019 by night mayor Shamiro van der Geld in the presence of the artists and with music by SYMBIOSYS.

Kaelyn and the girls, from the series Frères d’une île pas très proche, 2018 © Durimel

The Talent Issue of Foam Magazine serves as an exhibition catalogue and provides more in-depth texts around the featured artists' work.

FOAM TALENTS 2019
Florian Amoser (Switzerland), He Bo (China), Valentine Bo (Ukraine), Chen Zhe (China), Maisie Cousins (United Kingdom), Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques (France), Jalan&Jibril Durimel (France), Sophie Gabrielle (Australia), Eric Gyamfi (Ghana), Thomas Hauser (France), Gregory Eddi Jones (United States), Stelios Kallinikou (Cyprus), Takashi Kawashima (Japan), Dima Komarov (Russia), Lilly Lulay (Germany), Jaya Pelupessy (Netherlands), Daniel Shea (United States), Senta Simond (Switzerland), Salvatore Vitale (Italy) and Carmen Winant (United States).

The Foam Talent programme and the annual Talent Issue of Foam Magazine are supported by The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, the Niemeijer Fonds and the VandenEnde Foundation.

Foam Talent is made possible by Outset Netherlands, Kleurgamma Fine-Art Photolab, Down Town International, Snijder Schilderwerken Starframe and Asahi Super Dry.


Foam Next Door
Keizersgracht 617
1017 DS, Amsterdam
Netherlands

More information: HERE