A group united, as Marina Miraglia has written, by the “premise of breaking down the boundaries between the arts and the various contemporary media of communication,” and at the time made up of Gerardo Regnani, another member who later left the association and Fortunato (called Claudio) Isgrò (president), Claudio Cravero (vice president), Concetta Occhipinti and Pierpaolo Preziosi (directors).
The collection’s first “home,” from October 29, 1998, was the Spazio FINE: an exhibition space and, until 2002, also a free venue for cultural meetings and exchanges (between authors, critics, experts, institutions and the public) located in the former warehouses of the Docks Dora in Turin.
And so, with the intention of promoting an area of free exchange, the nonprofit-making activities of the association have largely been focused on presenting new authors (beginners and up-and-coming talents, in particular) on the Italian and international scene. Over the years the programming of the Spazio FINE has seen a series of initiatives: various exhibitions, the “Tra parole e immagini” events (meetings with art critics, gallery owners, historians of photography, artists and publishers) and occasions like “Incontri & Fotografia” (discussions of portfolios by critics and gallery owners). Through cultural exchanges FINE has also collaborated with a number of other associations and institutions, both public and private, in Italy and in Europe. The trace and “emblem” of this journey has been the creation of a special collection of works that, at the moment, is made up of donations by over a hundred photographers from various parts of the world.
The collection is in addition a “testimony” to another fundamental value of the FINE cultural association, its nonprofit-making basis. An ideal attained, in line with developments in other fields of social work, through the promotion of occasions of free and democratic aggregation and exchange conceived from a perspective of complementarity rather than antagonism. A sharing aimed at favoring civil growth through the kind of “being together” that ought always to be at the base of any constructive form of association.