A few months ago, a simple message showed up in our Instagram inbox. It was from Paolo Woods. To paraphrase, it essentially said that ‘I am the curator of this year’s edition of Cortona on the Move, among the most known photo festivals of Italy; and I would like to invite you to be a part of this year’s festival’. At first, we didn't believe it. We really thought someone was pulling a joke on us. We had never sent in any applications anywhere, so we were really surprised as a series of events unfolded after that.
We spoke to Paolo on the phone. He told us that he is including wedding photography in this year’s festival, since he believes that as a genre, it demands a lot of hard work which often goes unacknowledged when it comes to the art form. We believed in his vision. “We would love to be there”, we told him. We started figuring out our travel plans to visit Italy - a place we had been told has the power to fundamentally change what you think about food & drinks. But more on that later.
To cut a long story short, we flew to Italy from Amsterdam (a place we were holidaying at for a week but more on that later), but not without experiencing the now infamous delays and abrupt reschedules of European flights. We reached Rome, which we sadly left unexplored and intend to visit again next year, and took a train to Cortona, where we were picked up by the organisers of the festival and taken to Hotel St Luca - a beautiful property where all the photographers were staying. What follows now, is a series of images narrating our experience at ‘Cortona on the Move’. But before that, a huge thank you to the entire Cortona on the Move team, especially to Veronica Nicolardi (Director) and Paolo Woods (Artistic Director). Thank you to Marie Sumalla of Le Monde. And thank you to all the beautiful people we met at the festival and also because of us, some of whom are now our friends.
Here we go!
