STATEMENT
I am a curator, writer, and researcher working across photography, contemporary art, and visual culture.
My research begins with a question: what is photography becoming?
I am interested in the ways images emerge from material, technological, biological, and political processes. Photography, in this sense, extends beyond the photographic apparatus, unfolding through chemical transformations, ecological entanglements, machine vision, and forms of non-human agency.
Drawing on feminist and posthuman thought, I explore the conditions through which images are produced, circulated, and made visible, as well as the histories and power relations embedded in these processes.
Writing and curatorial practice are interconnected dimensions of my research. Through encounters with artists, images, and technologies, I investigate how contemporary visual practices can challenge established ways of seeing and open new possibilities for understanding the world.
BIO
Sara Benaglia is an independent researcher, writer, and curator whose work explores photography as a material, ecological, and political process. Moving across visual culture, feminist theory, and critical writing, she investigates the changing conditions of photographic images — from their extractive histories to their entanglements with plants, technologies, infrastructures, and more-than-human forms of agency.
She is the author of Immagini infestate. Ecologie tossiche della fotografia (Mimesis, 2026) and Note ai margini della storia dell'arte (Postmedia, 2023), and co-author, with Mauro Zanchi, of Augmented Images (Cimorelli, 2026) and the Metafotografia trilogy (Skinnerboox, 2019–2021).
Her curatorial practice includes exhibitions and research projects at BACO – Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna in Bergamo, including collaborations with Irene Fenara, Maya Watanabe, and Alberto Sinigaglia. Her writing has appeared in Il Giornale dell'Arte, Doppiozero, ATPdiary, and other publications.
Her research has been presented internationally, including at Aalto University, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, and the Real Academia de España en Roma. She is a selected speaker at the International Conference on Photography and Theory (ICPT 2026) in Nicosia.
She teaches at LABA Brescia, where she co-coordinates the MA Photography Programme with Mauro Zanchi, and at NABA Milan. In 2026, she was a visiting lecturer at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach through Erasmus+.
Her international experience includes residencies at HANGAR Lisbon, CCA Kitakyushu in Japan, and Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte.
PUBLICATIONS
SHOOT! (Krisis Publishing, forthcoming)AUGMENTED IMAGES (Cimorelli editore, forthcoming)
Immagini infestate. Ecologie tossiche della fotografia (Mimesis, 2026)
Note ai margini della storia dell'arte (Postmedia, 2023)
Le insidie delle immagini (Postmedia, 2022) — with Mauro Zanchi
The Mobility of the Matrix (Lubrina Editore, 2021)
Metafotografia III (Skinnerboox, 2021) — with Mauro Zanchi
Metafotografia II (Skinnerboox, 2020) — with Mauro Zanchi
Metafotografia I (Skinnerboox, 2019) — with Mauro Zanchi
Oltrerosa (Moretti & Vitali, 2018) — with Mauro Zanchi
L'Africa in Giardino (Moretti & Vitali, 2018) — with Mauro Zanchi
Casting the Circle (Fortino Editions, 2015)
TRANSLATIONS
Selected translations for or Postmedia Books:
— Sarah Hyndman, Why Fonts Matter (2024)
— Mieke Bal, Narratology in Practice (2024)
— Andreas Huyssen, The Art of Memory in the Contemporary World (2024)
— Andrew Dewdney, Forgetting Photography (2023)
CONTACT
saramarghe (at) gmail.com
Instagram: @sara__benaglia