Foundation

Kindergarten has been the exhibition space of the Rolla Foundation since 2010. The former nursery school in Bruzella hosts photographic exhibitions supported and curated by the foundation. The photographs are from the private collection of Rosella and Philip Rolla who have decided to share their interest and passion for the photographic medium.

The historic town of Bruzella, in the Valle di Muggio, about 10 km from Chiasso and 26 km from Lugano, is now part of the new Breggia community (Mendrisio). At an elevation of 600 metres on a terraced hillside the kindergarten is situated on the first floor of the former Town Hall, in front of the San Siro parish church.

 

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Current exhibition
Scenescape
08.06.2024 - 24.11.2024
Scenescape
08.06.2024 - 24.11.2024

Scenescape is the twenty-third exhibition organized by the Rolla Foundation. Philip Rolla's introductory text explains the proposed theme: "By chance or by choice everything we see becomes a scene to our vision. This may be simple, almost nothing, complex, sophisticated or banal, but is a scene, maybe just for an instant, maybe over an elapsed time span and it becomes part of our visual memory.
Our collection contains many photographs of the very simplest nature, a tree, shrub, wall, a horizon profile, some almost nothing but each is a scene and contains a beauty which maybe cannot be described but that we can feel."
The authors are Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Vincenzo Castella, Giuseppe Chietera, Aline d'Auria, Ray K. Metzker, Linda Fregni Nagler, Jan Koster, Josef Koudelka, Francine Mury, Igor Ponti, Luciano Rigolini, Philip Rolla, Josef Sudek, Hiroshi Sugimoto, John Szarkowski and Fabio Tasca.

See the exhibition video here

Free Entry
Every second Sunday of the month from 2 PM to 6 PM
and always by appointment

The exhibition participates in Swiss Photomonth
from 30 August to 6 October 2024

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News
From our library: Hidden Mother by Linda Fregni Nagler

The Hidden Mother is comprised of 1,002 photographs (from daguerreotypes and tintypes to cartes de visite and cabinet cards), all examples of a now redundant practice: to cloak or hide a parent within the background of a child’s portrait, a common procedure from the advent of photography up until the 1920s, when exposure times were relative slow, and a hidden …

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From our library: Summer Nights by Robert Adams

In the mid-1970s, Robert Adams began recording nocturnal scenes near his former home in Longmont, Colorado. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, suburban houses, roads, sidewalks and fields seemed transfigured. 25 years after first publishing a sequence of these pictures in 1985 as Summer Nights, he revisited his project, amending its title and completely re-editing its contents to create a …

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Swiss Photomonth

We are participating in Swiss Photomonth, a new initiative by the association ‘Spectrum – Photography in Switzerland’. 

The first edition is from 30 August to 6 October 2024.

The Swiss Photomonth acts as a loudspeaker for the Swiss photography scene in its entirety, and aims to introduce an audience as wide as possible to the many venues, large and …

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Videos of past exhibitions

Visit the Exhibitions section or our Vimeo page

We offer you the last four exhibitions but we are working on documenting the previous ones as well.

Rolla Foundation - Publications

Between two worlds. Story of Philip Rolla
by Maria Grazia Rabiolo

When Philip Rolla left California after graduating from university, the trip he took was diametrically opposite to that of his grandparents, who had arrived in California in the early twentieth century from Piedmont. His professional adventure began in Turin and continued in Italian-speaking Switzerland. A craftsman-engineer, he is the …

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SPECTRUM - Photography in Switzerland

New SPECTRUM portal to find museums, galleries, collections, archives, libraries, festivals, schools in Switzerland.


Spectrum - Photography in Switzerland was established in 2017 as a successor to ASIP (ASIP - Association Suisse des institutions pour la photographie was founded in 1996 as an association of Swiss photographic institutions).

Spectrum - Photography in Switzerland now welcomes not only photo institutions, collective …

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