| The land between the River Sile and the Tagliamento, the Eastern Venice area, lies between one and two meters below sea level, protected by a continuous system of embankments. Fifty years from now, the sinking of the soil and the rising of the sea level could bring the water back to where it was before, submerging the plains and the cities of the coast. There is a book, a kind of ark, in which twelve photographers were each given the task of rescuing twelve images from this area of the 'great land reclamation' before it is too late. Viaggio in Bonifica is at the same time a look at a specific territory, essential to understanding what it has become and above all what it might become, and a method of collective photographic survey. It is an exercise in drawing attention to and recovering contact with everyday things, with all that is capable of sustaining human life, linked to durability and persistence. An identity that clings to things and that resists the progressive draining of knowledge and information. |
