Recipient of the 2nd edition of the Youth Photo Book Support Fund
« L'École Buissonnière » by Allegra Baggio Corradi
As part of the latest edition of the Youth Photo Book Support Fund, Allegra Baggio Corradi’s project L’École Buissonnière — could be translated as Play truant or Play hooky — has been selected by a dedicated panel of experts. The Italian artist now becomes the second recipient of the fund, following Olivia Arthur and her book Lee and the Sea Creatures, published in 2025.
Born in 1994 in Bolzano, Italy, Allegra Baggio Corradi is currently an editor at Shibboleth. Alongside this, she conducts community-based research into language and transforms it into books, which serve both as artist’s publications and learning tools, brought to life within these same communities through various educational programmes. She has also contributed to the publication L is for Look — linked to the exhibition of the same name, which will soon be presented at the Rencontres d’Arles —, a book on children’s photo books, co-published by the Institut pour la photographie and Spector Books.
Portrait of Allegra Baggio Corradi © Elisa Mapelli
L’École Buissonnière, the project that won this edition of the Youth Photo Book Support Fund, is taking shape as a series of photo books intended for 12–15-year-olds. Developed during workshops with children from Parisian community centres, the series will feature twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, exploring twelve distinct photographic genres. Photography acts as an inclusive language, inviting everyone to enter the narrative, to observe, imagine and create. Portraits of leaves, details of tree bark, landscapes and reflections become tools for considering ecology, community and ways of inhabiting the world together.
The first volume of the project is a reimagining of A Year in the Wonderland of Trees by American author Hallam Hawksworth, published in 1926 and illustrated by Lora Palmer Atkinson. A hundred years on, this book becomes a photographic narrative rooted in today’s social and ecological challenges.
Over the next two years, Allegra Baggio Corradi will receive support from the Institute’s team and a grant of €10,000 to assist her in bringing her publishing project to fruition and seeing it published by October 2027.