Armando Perna

Armando Perna (Reggio Calabria, 1981) is a documentary photographer. Since 2013 he has been involved in a long term research focused on the process of militarization and compartmentalization of space seen as a result of practices rooted in the history of the Lebanese civil war, when Beirut was fragmented into well delineated territories each controlled by a sectarian militia. Armando Perna looks to what anthropologists call “prohibited spaces”: urban sites that were originally public and became “private”, inaccessible and out of reach for the majority of the population, because of the war and the urban renewal projects.

In 2013 his project “A3_Sa-Rc” is shortlisted for the architekturbild - European Prize for Architectural photography - (DAM, German museum of Architecture, Frankfurt ). Selected exhibitions: Museum of Estonian Architecture, KazimKuba, Kassel (2014); Vhs photogalerie, Stuttgart; International tag der Architektur, Vilnius; DAM, German Museum of Architecture, Frankfurt, GER (2013).

In 2014 the first version of his book project “Dahiye” is shortlisted for the fotobookfestival dummy award (Kassel, Germany). Selected exhibitions: Athens Photo Festival, The Photobook Museum, Cologne; PhotoIreland, Dublin, MIA Image Art Fair, Milan; Fotogaleriet, Oslo; Le Bal, Paris; Fotoleggendo, Rome (2014). In the same year Armando Perna joins the “Third Island Ag ’64 ’94 ’14” a research project dedicated to the promotion of an interdisciplinary and historical reflection on large-scale infrastructures in Italy curated by Antonio Ottomanelli. In this frame he presents “A3_Sa-Rc”, his work on the Southern Italy A3 Sa-Rc highway. “The Third Island” is published in 2016 by Planar books, and exposed at the Triennale Museum in Milan and at Palazzo Poli in Rome.

In 2017 his work on Dahiye and Shatila is presented at Pino Pascali Museum of Polignano a Mare (BA).