From 23 October to 15 November, Palazzo Toniolo in Pisa is hosting the first photographic exhibition of Valerio Bispuri’s “ORFANI” project. Thirty-three photographs taken in Pakistan, Belarus, Argentina and Zambia.
Children without one or both parents, abandoned children, raised in care homes or on the streets. Children with disabilities for whom abandonment can mean an even deeper sense of isolation and loneliness. They are the subjects of “Orfani”, Valerio Bispuri’s photographic project, which is being presented as an exhibition for the first time, running from 23 October to 15 November 2026 at Palazzo Toniolo in Pisa.
La mostra è visitabile tutti i giorni, ad ingresso libero, dalle 16.00 alle 19.00. Il sabato e la domenica anche dalle 10.00 alle 13.00.
The project was presented in 2024 at the Visa pour l’Image international photojournalism festival in Perpignan, where it reached the final of the Visa d’Or competition. In Pisa, for the first time, the work takes the form of an exhibition: 33 photographs from four continents, ranging from Pakistan to Belarus, and from Argentina to Zambia. The exhibition route continues inside the House-Museum of Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, where part of the exhibition is on display. Visitors will thus also be able to explore the rooms where Toniolo lived from his arrival in Pisa in 1879 until his death in 1918.
A photographic journey that brings back into focus a reality which, at least in our country, has gradually become less visible. Orphanages as we knew them in the past have given way to different forms of care that place greater emphasis on a family-like environment. But abandoned children have not disappeared. And in many parts of the world, being an orphan, living in extreme poverty or having a disability can still mean growing up on the margins, hidden from view.
It is precisely this invisibility that Bispuri’s photography seeks to challenge.
The project stems from a long journey and from the encounters the photographer has had over the years with abandoned children. His research has taken him to four countries that are very far apart, yet united by a common circumstance: children growing up without one or both parents, who must seek their place in the world every day.
These are fragments of lives that are far apart, yet which are brought closer together in the photographs. Bispuri does not seek categories or definitions: he seeks people. Faces, gestures, rooms, beds, toys and, above all, gazes. Photography thus becomes a tool for bearing witness and preserving memory: it cannot, on its own, change the lives of those children, but it can make them visible and prevent us from looking away.
The exhibition forms part of the Fondazione Opera Giuseppe Toniolo’s initiative to bring certain major social issues of our time to the public’s attention, including through the medium of photography. Following last year’s exhibition dedicated to the plight of prisoners, and once again through the work of Valerio Bispuri, Palazzo Toniolo returns to address a reality often hidden from our daily view: that of abandoned children.
The exhibition is held under the patronage of UNICEF Italy, the Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence and the Municipality of Pisa, and with the support of Fondazione Pisa, The Wide Factory and the Impegno e Futuro cooperative.
