On 7 March 2024, at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Terna, the company operating the electricity transmission grids, inaugurated the new edition of the “Driving Energy 2024 Award – Contemporary Photography”, a free photography competition open to both professional and amateur photographers, aimed at promoting and developing the country’s culture and new talents in the sector.
There will be time until 30 June to register for the competition, which this year starts with the theme poetically declined in the title The Way of the Invisible. This year’s theme is once again dear to the electricity transmission company, which, if last year with In Praise of Balance, focused on the company’s delicate operation on the important quest for balance between electrical energy produced and electrical energy consumed, this year focuses on the ontological nature of electrical energy, an invisible everyday element that we only recognise by its effects, on the one hand, and on the other on the search for invisibility of the infrastructures that enable the transmission of electricity, from underground and underwater cables to the camouflage painting of electricity poles.
As in previous years, the theme serves as a double pretext: that of telling the story and shining the spotlight on the different aspects of the company sponsoring the Award, and as inspiration for the photographic production of the competition, this year open, therefore, to the invisible, to what is without being seen, phenomenology of presence/absence.
There will be five prizes again this year: the Senior Prize (worth 15,000 euros), the Youth Prize (up to 30 years of age) and the Amateur Prize (both worth 5,000 euros), and the Academy Mention and Terna’s Most Voted Work Mention (both worth 2. 000 euros), which in addition to the monetary reward will receive a not inconsiderable notoriety, as will all the prize finalists, thanks to the exhibition (which will be free of charge) curated by Marco Delogu, president of Palaexpo, in the spaces of Palazzo delle Esposizioni, this autumn, and the subsequent production of the catalogue.
A jury of high-profile personalities in the field of photography and art in general will choose the works on show and the winners of the various prizes: the aforementioned Marco Delogu, Lorenza Bravetta, curator of Photography, Cinema, New Media for the Milan Triennale and Director of the Automobile Museum in Turin, Francesca Barbi Marinetti, art critic, curator, cultural entrepreneur and creator of cultural events, Micol Forti curator of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection of the Vatican Museums, Rosa Alba Impronta, entrepreneur and creator of the Made In Cloister Foundation in Naples, the D’Innocenzo brothers, filmmakers, screenwriters, poets and photographers, and David Massey, Director of External Relations and Institutional Affairs of the Terna Group. In addition, the Academy Award will be chosen by a Committee of Honour that includes all of last year’s Award winners.
“For the Driving Energy Award, 2024 is in all likelihood the year of consecration, an extraordinary achievement for a project that was born only two years ago. The third edition of the competition kicks off, benefiting from the intense work carried out so far with Terna: the Prize has now become a much-awaited appointment for professionals and is recognised as a fundamental stage of contemporary photography in Italy,” said Marco Delogu, outlining, therefore, the increasing importance of the event, both in terms of its function as a showcase and as a research event, of a Prize that is, after all, newborn and has already carved out a significant space for itself in the panorama of contemporary photography.
Driving Energy Award 2024 – Contemporary Photography, call opened until June 30th
images (cover) Driving Energy Award, 2024,invitation (1-2) Press conference, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Driving Energy Award with Marco Delogu, Palaexpo’s President and curator of the Award, Igor De Biasio, Terna’s President and David Massey, Terna’s Director External Relations and Institutional Affairs.
