Beautiful Country: Cortona international photography festival – in pictures

Cortona on the Move 2026, an international photography festival, has opened with the theme Beautiful Country. More than 30 exhibitions explore Italy in all its complexity, blending the spirit of the aristocratic grand tour with the depth of contemporary documentaries. View from Vesuvio III, 2025. Photograph: Kourtney Roy/Courtesy of Spot Home Gallery/Cortona on the Move 2026 Mon 3 Aug 2026 08.00 CEST The Queen, traditional costume, Venice Alys Tomlinson documents the traditional costumes and masks worn at festivals and celebrations on the islands of the Venetian lagoon as well as Sicily and Sardinia. The images invite us into a mysterious world divided between the sacred and the profane, capturing part of the mystery and atavism of these cultural rituals and beliefs Photograph: Alys Tomlison/Cortona on the Move 2026 L’allongée, from the Skin of Lava series, 2022 Chiara Indelicato’s photographic project on her home island of Stromboli explores the evolving way of inhabiting the volcanic outcrop, and aims to understand and convey the suffering of nature and its mysterious language Photograph: Chiara Indelicato/Cortona on the Move 2026 Pisa, Piazza dei Miracoli Alessandro Toscano’s project examines the issue of mass tourism in Italian art cities, which attract more than 50 million visitors a year. The digitally processed images show overcrowded locations – Rome, Pisa and Florence – filled with impossibly huge crowds and overrun by tourists creating new landscapes in themselves Photograph: Alessandro Toscano/Cortona on the Move 2026 Agata, from the Battle Royale project, 2019 Visual artist Federica Sasso’s work is presented in an immersive intervention curated by Emanuele Amighetti. Large-format photographs and digital projections inspired by gaming and internet culture reflect on adolescence, digital culture, and the relationship between individuality and technology, self-representation and digital avatars Photograph: Federica Sasso/Cortona on the Move 2026 New Year’s Eve in Aprilia, 2005 Rave, the last counterculture pays homage to the phenomenon of techno gatherings, free and self-managed experiences brought to life through the lens of Mattia Zoppellaro and Chiara Fossati Photograph: Mattia Zoppellaro/Cortona on the Move 2026 Crespina quarry, Fivizzano Julie Hascoët’s project Carrara, the Mountain’s Twilight looks at Carrara – a white marble quarry in the mountains of Tuscany Photograph: Julie Hascoët/Cortona on the Move 2026 Punta Licosa, Campania, 2026 The project Italian Story by the photographer Andrea Modica, a third-generation Italian-American, takes shape through her travels across the country over the past 40 years – a very personal map of the country Photograph: Andrea Modica/Cortona on the Move 2026 Roma, 2014, from When the Night Falls The work of landscape photographer Luca Campigotto offers previously unseen views of the country’s vast historical and artistic heritage – rigorous large-format unseen views of often well-known locations Photograph: Luca Campigotto/Cortona on the Move 2026 Agip service station, 1959, Cerignola Italy in the Images of the Eni Archive features the service stations commissioned by Enrico Mattei in 1952 and designed by Mario Bacciocchi, complete with bars, markets and motels. The portraits of Italy’s changing lifestyle were captured by photographers who worked first for Agip and then for Eni, including Aldo Ballo, Federico Patellani and Luigi Ghirri Photograph: Federico Patellani/Cortona on the Move 2026 Sophia Loren at the Venice film festival, 1955 In the open-airspaces of Cortona’s Parterre, an exhibition shows part of the Paparazzi Project, curated by the writer Francesco Piccolo and published by Einaudi in 2025. Through images and texts, it takes a journey through the world of the paparazzi who hunted for celebrities during the Roman nights of the 1950s and 60s Photograph: Farabola Archives/Cortona on the Move 2026 Anita Ekberg and Federico Fellini on the set of La Dolce Vita, Rome, 1959 Photograph: Farabola Archives/Cortona on the Move 2026 The photographer Rino Barillari with the actor Audrey Hepburn in Rome in the 1960s Photograph: Archivio Barillari/Mastrosanti/Cortona on the Move 2026 Via Nervesa, Via Longanesi, 1979 The exhibition Milan at the Edges gathers images from the 1970s and 80s by Gabriele Basilico and the contemporary work of Angelo Leonardo and examines the urban and social transformation of the city’s outskirts Photograph: Gabriele Basilico/Cortona on the Move 2026 View from the Schifa building, Atena Lucana, Salerno, 2026 Photograph: Alessandro Imbriaco/Cortona on the Move 2026 An activist protests in Lützerath, Germany, in 2023 against the construction of a coal mine From the series Eviction, this image features in Groundswell, a project co-funded by the European Union that brings together institutions dedicated to contemporary photography examining the climate crisis Photograph: Ingmar Björn Nolting/Cortona on the Move 2026 The Arganil fire brigade tackles a wildfire in the Coimbra district of Portugal in August 2025 This image by Gonçalo Fonseca comes from the series A Burning Landscape Photograph: Gonçalo Fonseca/Cortona on the Move 2026 Picking angel’s trumpets behind a convent in Rome, 1990 Campagna Romana, the Countryside of Ancient Rome is a project Joel Sternfeld developed between 1989 and 1991. Following in the footsteps of painters who travelled from Europe and the US to see Rome, he was also drawn to the outskirts of a city that preserves the vestiges of its imperial past while also being open to the influences of the present Photograph: Joel Sternfeld/Cortona on the Move 2026 03 Vesuvio I, 2025 Kourtney Roy developed her project Failed Postcards from Napoli in 2025, during a residency at the Spot Home Gallery in the city. Relying on self-portraiture, the Canadian presents herself as an eccentric protagonist of stories left to our imagination Photograph: Kourtney Roy/Spot Home Gallery View from Vesuvio III, 2025 Photograph: Kourtney Roy/Spot Home Gallery