TITLE: The Methodical Mistake

In the era of Artificial Intelligence generated images, I couldn’t avoid asking myself about the future of human generated images. Going through the history of photography there are many examples of mistaken pictures underestimated at first, that later became iconic. This inspired me to go beyond fixed rules, embracing mistakes methodically in order to reach a deeper meaning in my work. The Methodical Mistake is a project that was originated from an error in pulling the film of an old medium format camera. When I saw the first negatives I was stricken by the cinematic feeling that expressed time in a different way, this opened a big range of possibilities multiplying the narrative to combine images in order to create different meanings and emotions.
In the search for authentic images, film photography for its imperfection becomes human.
In the end the ability to see chances in mistakes is among the things that has allowed the progress of the human species and what makes “us”unrepeatable.

AUTHOR: FRANCESCA CAO (Italy)

Francesca Cao is an Italian photographer based in Milano.
After graduating in Philosophy in Milano, she moves to New York to attend the School of the International Center of Photography where she graduates in 2007.
Since then she works as a free lance photographer for magazines and newspapers as The New York Times, II Corriere della Sera, D, La Repubblica delle donne, Wired, Marie Claire and Zoom magazine. In her personal work Francesca constantly looks for new ways of telling stories, in order to emotionally get close to the viewer and at the same time to stimulate the aesthetic reflection on photography. To do so she uses different formats in The Lion of Central Asia, creates an installation of the pictures shot in the post seismic abandoned villages together with the physical objects collected there in Temporary Life, shot portraits through the broken lens of a rangefinder camera in Hidden Identities, uses wallpapers as beautiful backdrops for unlikely porn stars in The Courage To Be a Desire. For her personal work she was selected for Descubrimientos at Photo Espana, was awarded with the Tierney Fellowship, was finalist at the Inge Morath award and at the Unseen Dummy Award in Amsterdam. Her work is in the Donata Pizzi Collection and her projects where exposed in Italy, Europe and in the United States. Her latest work, Temporary Life, is about the unfinished post-seismic reconstruction in Italy is a book published by Postcart in 2020.
In 2023 part of her project The Courage To Be A Desire was selected for collective exhibitions in the United States, in Italy and Hungary.