Giuseppe Micciché – No ponte

The exhibition in the entrance area of Balgrist University Hospital shows fourteen photographs from Giuseppe Micciché’s long-term project ‘No ponte’.
Since 2005, Giuseppe Micciché (*1971) has been photographing the coastal area around the Strait of Messina. He is interested in this location as a historically significant transit zone between the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas, but also in the context of his own family history: it was from here that Micciché’s parents and grandmother left Sicily in the 1960s to find work and a new home in Switzerland.

The construction of the world’s largest suspension bridge, which is to connect Sicily with the Italian mainland, is a controversial topic in this region: supporters hope for an economic upswing, while opponents warn of the ecological consequences. Micciché uses his camera to collect documentary and metaphorical images for this dilemma. He shows how something that does not (yet) exist can be present. Shortly after Giuseppe Micciché’s photo book ‘No ponte’ was published in 2023, it was decided that construction would begin in the summer of 2025. Last August, the government announced that it would soon present concrete construction plans and timetables.

Since 2017, Fotostiftung Schweiz, in collaboration with the Balgrist University Hospital, has been organising an annual monographic exhibition of Swiss photographers. The temporary exhibitions in the public entrance areas of the hospital are part of a collaboration with Fotostiftung Schweiz , which is building a Balgrist collection of Swiss photography on behalf of the Balgrist University Hospital.