Can photography teach us how to read a place?
With Scuola della Luce's Journeys, we try to answer that question.

Moving away from the conventional idea of photography as a way of collecting travel memories, Journeys invite participants to use the camera as a compass—a tool for understanding the places they visit.

In a Journey, the destination is never just a backdrop: it is the starting point. Each location is chosen because it asks something of our gaze. With Paolo Verzone, we've travelled to Svalbard, where the Arctic's extreme light transforms everything, from ice caves to abandoned mines. With Jordi Bernadó, we've explored places where reality becomes ambiguous, from Skopje's replica monuments to the landscapes of Formentera reshaped by tourism.
Every Journey begins with the photographer's vision, with their unique way of seeing a place. But a Journey unfolds over several days, and during that time we live together—we walk, eat, talk, and get to know one another through a new shared routine. It is through this experience that the photographer's perspective is enriched by everyone else's: by those discovering a place for the first time and by those returning to find it changed from how they remembered it.

In the diversity of these perspectives, and in the way they are shared, photography becomes a way of questioning how we experience the places around us.