•Short-Term, But Long-Term
This project, one of the winners of the Open Call 2025, addresses a common question in the history of photography: what should we do with war images? Should they be shown or hidden? Should they be contextualized by the media or should they circulate freely between sender and receiver? Is it true, as Susan Sontag said, that the continued consumption of violent images numbs perception, and that the visual record, when excessive, makes reality seem untrue?
Short-Term, But Long-Term, made up of more than 500 photographs posted on dating apps by Israeli soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2024, brings these questions into the present day. For all the discomfort they provoke, these screenshots –which openly expose personal information that previously belonged to the private sphere– show how the combination of social media and smartphones is changing the visual representation of war. For the first time in history, we are receiving war images en masse and without intermediaries, collected and broadcast by their subjects, with unprecedented immediacy. Images, sometimes extremely violent, coexist on our screens with other content and seep into everyday life until they become normal.
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Born in Venice, Italy, in 1988, Federico Vespignani is an Italian photographer and cinematographer. Graduated in Visual Arts at the Instituto Europeo di Design in 2013, Vespignani regularly works with clients and institutions such as Balich Wonder Studio, E.L.M. Media, the Venice Biennale, the European Cultural Centre or the University of Padua, among others. His editorial work has been published in leading international media such as The New York Times, Geo, Courrier International, Monocle, Domus, Society, Forbes, Bloomberg and D La Repubblica. In 2022, Federico published his first monograph with 550BC, Por aquí todo bien, a visual investigation of an organised crime group in Honduras and has just published Short-Term, But Long-Term with Debatable Publishing.
Indoor installation
•Federico Vespigniani •Short-Term, But Long-Term
Nº 14 on the map
Venue: Punta Begoña Galleries
Address: Ereaga dock 6, Neguri
Hours: Thursday and friday
17:30–20:30
Saturday 11:00–14:30 / 17:30–20:30
Sunday 11:00–14:30
Collaborators:
