Wiki Loves Monuments, book celebrating 10 years of the photography competition
The competition has been held online every September since 2012 in 93 countries
Wiki Loves Monuments, book celebrating 10 years of the photography competition.
Celebrate Italian cultural heritage through 100 photos, the first vehicle for its diffusion, promotion and protection. With this objective, Wikimedia Italia has created Wiki Loves Monuments, the book (Ledizioni, p. 244, 30 euros) which celebrates ten years in Italy of the photographic competition of the same name through i 100 winning shots from the first ten editions.
Thought of how a database of cards dedicated to monuments, the volume collects images and texts from Wikipedia and related projects. Mixing photos and encyclopedic entries, the book demonstrates how it is possible to produce new knowledge starting from the shared contents of the project volunteers Wikimedia. Not only that: by exploiting the concept of the link between voices, which has made the fortune of Wikipedia, the volume creates connections and short circuits, bringing together apparently distant places and topics.
It happens then, thanks to a panorama of the Val d'Orcia among the finalists of the 2018 edition, to set out to discover the via Francigena, of Frederick Barbarossa and the mummy of Zagreb, all cited in the same encyclopedic entry. The storm surge in Polignano a Mare – the winning shot of 2022 – offers the opportunity to read about the Amazonomachy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Monica Vitti; while the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna from 2012 brings together California, Maserati and the critic Gian Carlo Argan.
The volume, edited by Iolanda Think and conceived by Baringo communication laboratory in collaboration with the graphic studio TOMO TOMOInn radical work as it presents itself to the reader with the blue cover that references the color of Wikipedia links, but also for the choice of Open Access. All the contents of the book are in fact available to be consulted and reused, always citing the authors and applying the Creative Commons licenses compatible.
“This book collects the winning photographs of ten years of competition but in realityIt is even more central to the meaning and meaning of Wiki Loves Monuments, they are the ones beyond 180.000 images produced in Italy who did not win any prizes but transformed the red dots of monuments not yet photographed into blue, thus contributing to free documentation" he has declared Iolanda Pensa, president of Wikimedia Italia. “We dedicate it to the thousands of Italian volunteers who write, edit and add photos to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikimedia projects and which document the heritage on OpenStreetMap maps”.
The Italian edition of Wiki Loves Monuments takes place online, every September since 2012, simultaneously with 93 other countries: This is the largest photography competition in the world which involves professional and amateur photographers to document Italian monuments on Wikipedia and on sister projects.
Since its first edition, the competition has helped document millions of monuments, with over 2,7 million images uploaded by more than 100.000 participants.
The Italian edition confirms itself as a valuable collaborative tool for digital documentation of monuments: since 2012, over 8.750 participants have uploaded more than 180.000 photographs to Wikimedia Commons, choosing from over 23.000 photographable monuments and cultural assets. Public administrations, cultural and religious bodies, private owners and a large number of volunteers are the real pillars of the initiative.
Reproduction reserved © Copyright La Milano
