Gianni Berengo Gardin: Mostri a Venezia

A powerful exhibition intended to make one think about these monsters that daily threaten Venice, making the monuments tremble every time they “bow” as they pass before the city, and which as a result of their bulk loom over the palaces and almost steal the scene from the architectural marvels.

From these intruders, Venice looks almost like a model, like one of the reproductions to be seen at Las Vegas: a product to be quickly consumed without even having to leave the ship.

The photographs on show in the palace that is the symbol of the city constitute a hard-hitting, severe and precise report: the exhibition is a testimony but above all a condemnation by one of Italy’s greatest photographers, Gianni Berengo Gardin, who lived for many years in Venice, his father’s home town.

The exhibition marks a clearly stated position, which the photographer feels as his civic duty to declare. Adopting a journalistic eye, the photographs are direct, essential, without artifice or exaggeration. They are in black and white to highlight the lines, the details, the overlay of forms, and to prevent colour from distracting from the shocking image or from softening the violence of the facts, the final aim being to give a sense of how a relationship between the “monsters” and their “prey” – Venice – is totally impossible.