Luca Santese (1985) is an Italian photographer, curator and film director.
He was born and grew up in Milan area. He studied at Monza’s Art institute and at the Fine Arts Academy of Brera in Milan. While attending academy he worked like assistant in Alex Majoli’s studio.
In 2008 he launches and became a member of Cesura group. Cesura are a photographers group representing projects. The concept of the project is to create a strong and independent group capable to work on quality and artistic research.
In 2009 he won Photolucida Critical Mass International new talent photographers Award.
In 2010 he was selected by the World Press Photo prize with the project “Detroit 2009-2010” and in the same year he exposed for the first time the project “Found Photos in Detroit” at Le Bal Space of Paris, to which followed exhibitions at Kulturhuset of Stockholm, at the OGR of Turin and at the MoCP of Chicago and numerous further exhibitions in many countries in the world.
In 2012, Found Photos in Detroit book was published. This book has collected seven nominations as “the best photographic book of the year” and in 2014 was put in the volume “Photobook: A History Vol: III", edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. Parr and Badger consider the book as one of 200 best books of photography post world war two.
The curatorial experience of Found Photos in Detroit continued in the Italy & Italy project, a book that collects a selection of images of the city of Rimini in the 90s and he also recently curated the exhibition for the 125 years of activity of the Touring Club Italiano selecting 125 original images from the Touring archive. The exhibition was shown at the Palazzo della Regione Lombardia in Milan.
Today Santese's work is concentrated in the production of research photography. He continues to deal with experimental documentary photography as the projects Realpolitik, Festa and the recent photobook : "Il Corpo del Capitano": a research developed with Marco P. Valli focused on the different perspectives of Matteo Salvini's propaganda - the political leader of the Italian Lega and center-right forces.
Santese's works have been published and exhibited in Europe, Unites States, Russia and United States.