Barena is the lagoon environment surrounding Venice, the environment that I experience and portray in an unusual way, aboard my small boat. More precisely Barena comes from the Venetian word “baro,” meaning a bush or clump of grass. These are tabular shaped soils typical of lagoons, periodically submerged by the tides.
The salt marshes are very important ecologically: they help promote water exchange, limit the impact of the tides on the water level by functioning as an expansion vessel, moderate the action of wave motion, and are home to characteristic vegetation and rich bird life, as mentioned above.
Today, however, they tend to slowly disappear as they are eroded by the action of water, accelerated by anthropogenic modifications such as the digging of deep channels, wave motion caused by motor boats, etc. With my work I try to introduce the fragile beauty of these places to the contemporary traveler, the hit-and-run tourist, hoping that by pausing to look at my photographs hanging in my studio they will stop for a moment, to think, to appreciate what surrounds us, which bit by bit we are letting escape.
