Venetian architecture re-imagined: new photography exhibition highlights Venice in Peril

Mimmo Jodice ‘Rialto’ (© Mimmo Jodice courtesy of Galerie Karsten Greve)

A major exhibition of photographs of Venice by 14 internationally renowned photographers is currently being held at Somerset House until 11 December 2011. The exhibition, Real Venice, is mounted by the Venice in Peril Fund and curated by Elena Foster, founder of Ivorypress.

For the project, the artists were challenged to create a series of original photographs of Venice, documenting its iconic and modern architecture, the everyday life of the city’s inhabitants and the ravages on the city fabric wrought by mass tourism and the rise of the lagoon water level.

Philip Lorca diCorcia ‘Looking Toward Venice from Mazzorbo’ (©Philip-Lorca diCorcia, courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York)

Highlights include:
Works by Dionisio González fusing the existing urban landscape with images of once-promised, but never realised, buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Aldo Rossi;
Antonio Girbés series Delirious City, kaleidoscopic images of Venetian buildings including Palladio’s theatre;
Candida Höfer portraits of the iconic La Fenice theatre, forming part of her series on ‘spaces built for performance’.

Robert Walker ‘Venetian Apron Suite #9′ (© Robert Walker)

All of the works in Real Venice have been donated by the artists to be sold in aid of Venice in Peril. Selected works from the artists’ portfolios were auctioned as part of the Phillips de Pury Photographs Sale on 3 November 2011.

Jules Spinatsch, ‘November’, from the series Exit Strategies (©Jules Spinatsch, courtesy of Blancpain Art Contemporain, Geneva and Galerie Luciano Fasciati, Chur)

The Venice in Peril Fund was created after the great flood in 1966, when the city’s waters rose to nearly two metres above mean water level. Since then it has distributed millions of pounds for the restoration of Venetian monuments, buildings and works of art. The Fund is committed to ensuring the sustainability of Venice, acting as a lobby group, informing the international media and working with outside bodies such as the University of Cambridge to broker agreement on how to deal with some of the critical ecological, demographic and socio-economic issues facing the city.

Anna Somers Cocks, Chairman of Venice in Peril, says: “The water level in Venice will rise by at least 50cm by 2100. If a solution is not found, Venice will die slowly and agonisingly, proof of our incapacity to face up to one of the greatest ecological, artistic and political challenges of our century. Those who say that Venice will go on surviving because it has already survived so long are tragically mistaken. The damp is crumbling the bricks, rusting the tie-rods that hold the houses together and already causing the 1000-year old mosaics in the atrium of St Mark’s basilica to fall off. Silvio Berlusconi’s government has no long-term plan for Venice, and the issue is not even the subject of national discussion. The protection of London from flooding is planned into the second half of the century. The Dutch are planning right through to 2100, but the most beautiful city on earth isn’t even looking 10 years ahead.”

Mimmo Jodice ‘Riva degli Schiavoni’ (© Mimmo Jodice courtesy of Galerie Karsten Greve)