Maree in una valle di montagna / Tides in a mountain valley, 2009 (a selection)

The project thematises the originally natural dynamics of tides as a paradoxical phenomenon created by human intervention in nature, which unfortunately also had catastrophic consequences in the past due to inadequate structural analysis of the mountain flanks: as a final effect of the strong rises and falls in the water level during the test phase of the plant, a rock mass of 250 million cubic metres collapsed into the Vajont reservoir in Italy on the night of 9 October 1963, triggering a tidal wave that overtopped the then highest dam wall in the world by several hundred metres, levelling five villages to the ground and claiming 2000 lives.

The photographs move between the geographically precisely documented state of a landscape and the emotional experience of the viewer’s reflective memory. This gives the images their characteristic impetus, which challenges the decoding of their contents both in geophysical-analytical and aesthetic terms. The author’s characteristic element of central perspective allows for an almost contemplative reading that subversively makes the contradiction inherent in the series of images resound.