Florence Through the Lens of Photography
In fall of 2025, University of Minnesota students taking a photography course developed with Accent visited Rifugio Digitale, a contemporary art gallery located in an old WWII air-raid tunnel. The walls of the 33-meter tunnel have been turned into a total of 16 digital screens that display a rotating series of photographs. The space was designed and renovated by architectural studio Archea Associati, an international firm that focuses on new artistic movements. The photographs at Rifugio exemplify this ethos, with images centered around frank portrayals of the human body, the uncanny and uncomfortable, and alienation from the earth.
This location was perfect for Professor Dario Orlandi’s photography course, which focused on Italian history and its intersection with the art form. The gallery’s location in a WWII air raid tunnel and its focus on the sort of avant-garde pieces the fascist governments of that time would label “degenerate” is clearly no coincidence. Not only that, but the exhibitions available to visitors of the Rifugio spotlight key moments in modern Italian history.
Rifugio sports a digital catalogue, allowing the visitors to choose which exhibitions they see. In this case, students chose an exhibition of works by Florentine photographer Paolo Cagnacci, the first few images covering the 1993 mafia-organized bombing of via dei Georgofili, mere steps from the Uffizi gallery. The second exhibition chosen focused on the few surviving Partisans—Italy’s underground resistance movement against the fascist regime terrorizing Italy during WWII.
On their way back to the Accent Study Center, the group passed by the Uffizi to see the site of the Georgofili bombing featured in the exhibition. This offered them the opportunity to reflect on the tragedy itself and Cagnacci’s photographic retrospective of the event.
The visit highlighted the fact that Florence is a modern, living city, home not just to breathtaking medieval architecture and the legacy of Dante, but also a refuge for new, blossoming avant-garde movements in the art world.
Accent Florence faculty have years of experience in the design and delivery of experiential courses in a U.S. education abroad context. Instructors use the city as course material; classroom lectures are enhanced by site visits to various locations in Florence which may include monuments, NGOs, community centers, museums, and neighborhood landmarks. Click here to read more about other specialized programs based in Florence.
