Overview

Inferno & Paradiso is the catalog accompanying the exhibition to be presented at the Cortona On The Move festival and later shown at the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne. This project explores the complexity of the human condition between suffering and hope, pain and joy. The project include twenty of today’s greatest photojournalists, each invited to select two images from their archives: one representing the most harrowing horror and one capturing a moment of joy. The exhibition and book challenge the idea that constant exposure to images of suffering leads to numbness. The real problem is often seeing bodies and stories that fail to reflect the genuine gaze we wish to offer them. The photographs, projected as slides in an immersive installation, guide visitors on a journey through Inferno and Paradiso, much like Virgil leads Dante in the Divine Comedy. The project reveals that hell and paradise are not distant or metaphysical places, but concrete conditions of our everyday lives. Happiness and suffering intertwine in a fragile balance that requires care, attention, and responsibility. Inferno & Paradiso serves as a warning against the indifference and apathy that often accompany global tragedies and crises. It invites us not to turn away, but to become active witnesses to reality. The book pays tribute to the moral courage of photographers who, often risking their lives, bring us hidden truths, revealing the darkest and brightest facets of humanity. In times marked by new crises and rising authoritarianism, this work confirms art’s power as a tool for memory and transformation. It urges us to reflect on what it means to live together, to face pain, and to nurture hope in a fragile and divided world.

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Alfredo Jaar is an artist, photographer, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002). Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992); Whitechapel, London (1992); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1995); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005). Major recent surveys of his work have taken place at Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2007); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2008); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V., Berlin (2012); Rencontres d'Arles (2013); KIASMA, Helsinki (2014); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (2023), and KINDL, Berlin (2024). The artist has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over 80 monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. In 2024 he was awarded the IV Albert Camus Mediterranean Prize. He was recently selected as the recipient of the 2025 Edward MacDowell Medal. His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MOCA and LACMA, Los Angeles; MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo; TATE, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MAXXI and MACRO, Rome; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlaebeck; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan; M+, Hong Kong; and dozens of institutions and private collections worldwide.

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