The Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture is promoting a series of three meetings in 2026 entitled Photography in the Age of AI , with the aim of exploring the multiplicity of functions and potential uses of the photographic image, the relationship between reportage and artistic practice, the policy choices of public institutions regarding the acquisition, commissioning, protection, valorization and promotion of contemporary production and, finally, the challenge that artificial intelligence poses to the photographic medium today

First meeting
at the National Central Library of Rome, May 27, 2026, 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

The first meeting is scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, May 27, 2026, at the Auditorium of the National Central Library of Rome, and is entitled " Between Testimony and Form. Reportage Photography and Art Photography in Contemporary Debate." The meeting aims to focus on the relationship between reportage photography and art photography: it is not simply a matter of distinguishing between genres—an increasingly permeable distinction—but of understanding how different functions (testimonial, narrative, authorial, aesthetic, etc.) impact the cultural qualification of images and the resulting policy.

Reportage photography has historically been associated with the function of testimony: documenting events, social phenomena, and historical transformations, ensuring their future memory. This function implies a strong connection with the referential dimension of the photographic image, that is, with its ability to attest to the existence of a fact. However, reportage photography is never a mere neutral recording: it involves a coordinated series of choices—framing, selection, sequencing, editing, distribution, etc.—that produce a conscious and intentional narrative. In this sense, reportage integrates a formal and authorial dimension that implies narrative construction, expressive intentionality, and aesthetic and cultural value. In recent decades, the art world has progressively embraced reportage practices, recognizing their formal and conceptual complexity and contributing to the blurring of the line between testimonial and formal value. Through the eyes of scholars and the testimonies of photojournalists and representatives of Italian photographic archives, the first meeting highlights the peculiarities of reportage photography from its origins to the present day and the coexistence within it of the documentary and aesthetic dimensions.

The other two meetings are scheduled for July 2026 on the theme The practices and genres of contemporary reportage and for September 2026 on the theme Contemporary photography and public policies: acquisition, conservation and valorization.