Photomanipulation nominee

Venice is the city where I grew up. I know it intimately and I love it deeply. It has been the subject of endless representations, from painting to photography, because its beauty impresses profoundly anyone who sees it. With this series I wanted to give my personal tribute to this incredible city. Venice is a world apart, a place with no time where it’s almost impossible to tell what is real and what is fantasy. Every building defeats the lows of gravity, every calle leads you somewhere you have never been, every bridge connects end keeps together ancient islet that have become one, unique city.
I took those pictures in November 2017 in St Mark’s Square. The high tide that flooded the city the night before was decreasing so there were lots of puddles in which the city reflected. I edited the pictures (brightness, shadows, clarity, highlights) and I converted to black and white only selected parts of them. Then I printed the pictures, I painted over them using acrylic colours and then I photographed them again.

I spent most of my life shooting and painting. When I finally realized that I need both, and they don’t need to be separate works, it set me free.
I’m not interest in creating fantasy, abstract worlds, and I’m not interested in appearances and descriptions either, but what I need to make sense to, is the world around me and all its people. Both the environment and every living being in it are constantly changing and their most significant traits are invisible to the eye. So, I asked myself how could I use photography to talk about something invisible?
Paint is a wonderful medium that opens you to infinite possibilities, but this versatility was a limit to me as I need that deep connection to the world around me that photography brings.
Photography is deeply linked to what we see, to the physical reality. Many scholars have discussed this topic at length, much better than I could ever do. It may be ‘the death of reality’, a ‘hyperreality’ or a ‘minute part of reality’, in any case its profound connection to the world that physically exists it’s undeniable.
But when emotions are involved, and we look at reality as something