Sebastiana Papa – Wonderful Reality
About
In a continuing partnership with Off Site Art/ArtBridge for L’Aquila, our sister nonprofit arts org in L’Aquila, Italy, this is the latest exhibit by Sebastiana Papa, the photographer from Teramo, Italy.
Her photographs capture the lives of people from diverse social, economic and religious backgrounds across Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa during the 20th century. Papa’s exhibition is part of the group photography exhibit “Wonderful Reality,” which explores themes of mystery, the unknown and fragility.
The exhibition was made possible through collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture, Armido and Pierluigi Frezza Spa, and the Gran Sasso Science Institute. The long-term partnership between ArtBridge and Off Site Art has received support from L’Aquila City Council, the Abruzzo Region, and the University of L’Aquila.
Participating Artist
Sebastiana Papa (1932-2002)
An Italian photographer born in Teramo who rose to prominence in the 1960s after beginning her career documenting Romanesque churches in Abruzzo.
Sebastiana Papa (1932-2002) was an Italian photographer born in Teramo. Starting with a Soviet-made Lubitel camera before switching to the Leica M3, she traveled extensively across the globe, capturing significant moments and subjects including Holocaust survivor Zivia Lubetkin Zuckerman in Poland, the funeral of Jan Palach in Prague, and cultural phenomena like tarantism in Puglia.
Throughout her career, Papa collaborated with major international newspapers and published twenty-six volumes with prestigious publishers. She had a particular focus on Israel, India, and female monasticism, making countless trips to these regions over the decades. Her final journeys were to two of her most beloved locations: Jerusalem in 2000 and Varanasi in 2001. After her death in Rome in 2002, her extensive archive of approximately 7,000 35mm negative films, contact sheets, and photographic prints was donated to the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation in Rome, while her library was given to the Centre for Peace and Interculture in Nonantola.
