The workshop invites participants to engage with both the possibilities and the ethical implications of working with archives, in line with the reflection proposed by On Ethics. Starting from projects developed through heterogeneous materials — personal collections, family photographs, official documents, studio portraits, or anonymous and forgotten images — each participant will be encouraged to question not only the narrative potential of the archive, but also the conditions of its existence, circulation, and reactivation.

The projects brought by participants will serve as the starting point for collective work. Through moments of discussion, editing sessions, and shared analysis, the group will explore strategies for reading, organising, and transforming their materials into new narrative forms. The process will not be limited to storytelling, but will instead place crucial questions at its centre: who produced these images? In what context? With whose consent? And what does it mean to reuse them today?

The workshop encourages participants to reflect on their own narrative approach, which may take different forms — from intimate storytelling to historical research, from the photobook to the exhibition or conceptual project — while still requiring a critical reflection on the role of the author and the responsibilities involved in using images created by others.

In her work, Martina Bacigalupo has often investigated incomplete, marginal, or problematic archives, challenging the idea of the image as a neutral document and working through processes of subtraction, recovery, and rewriting. During the workshop, she will share examples from her own practice to demonstrate how an archive can be activated without simply being appropriated, but rather questioned — questioning us in return — deconstructed, and ultimately returned to new readings.

Particular attention will be given to the notion of the archive as a “field of forces”: a space where hierarchies are constructed, meanings are produced, and power relations are reflected. In this sense, the workshop encourages the development of conscious practices capable of avoiding simplifications, stereotypes, or extractive readings, instead fostering collaborative and responsible approaches.

The workshop is open to photographers, artists, researchers, scholars, and anyone interested in the relationship between images, memory, and storytelling. No previous experience is required, but participants are expected to bring their own archive — even if partial or fragmentary — together with the desire to reactivate it and give it new life today.