Biography
Elena Franco was born in Turin in 1973 and lives between the province of Turin and the Lake Orta. She is an architect and she is in charge of international projects of town centre management, with a particular sensitivity for urbanism and urban requalification of the territory. Thanks to her restoration studies at the Turin Polytechnic, she has a particular talent for “reading” the buildings and understanding their transformation, also looking to a careful historical search. She is the author of several articles and essays about urban regeneration and she is often invited as a speaker to conferences and workshops in Italy and abroad. Photography – in particular documentary and research photography – has a great place in her activity and is often used in her projects as support to her work of local identity.
Besides her initiatives in documenting buildings and cities, she is engaged in a personal research on historical photography and memory recovery.
She has also collaborated on a number of projects related to theatre and photography, working with the theatre company Faber Teater.
As a photographer, she uses digital, film and instant cameras, but also old and vintage cameras that she collects.
The project “Antichi Ospedali” (Ancient Hospitals) is the result of a two-year research, started in 2012, and has already obtained the support of several important public authorities and Universities. It is going to be presented this year through a travelling exhibition that will pass by Vercelli, Milan, Turin, Novara, Bourg en Bresse, Lyon and Paris, being associated to study days and workshops inspired by Elena’s work.
The photographic series “Cauti racconti immaginari” (Cautions, imaginary tales) has been selected for the 2014 edition of the Milan Image Art Fair, under the section MIA Proposals and exposed in Frame and Colorno photo festival.
