VENEZIA. ALTER MUNDUS

Photographs by Alessandra Chemollo

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«Mundus alter Venetia dicta est» (The other world was called Venice): this is how italian poet Francesco Petrarca defines the lagoon city, a favorite subject of Alessandra Chemollo's lens for over twenty years. Her works, collected in this precious photographic exhibition, are able to make the "stones" speak, opening our eyes to the play of reflections of the water and the changing sky, in a place where borders seem to no longer exist.

For over twenty years, a favorite subject of Chemollo's lens, Venice has transformed into an alter mundus, visited and described over the centuries by famous travelers such as Henry James, Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, up to Ian McEwan and Christopher Bollen. Another world, in which it is necessary to move with caution, avoiding being captured by an image that seems familiar only because we secretly hope that it will help us support the power of this foreign city. Images in a tight narrative sequence, which do not want to be commented on, which do not seek explanations, but which connect to other worlds.

I have experience

and it is no joke if I say that

it is a seasickness

on dry land.

Franz Kafka

Starting from the volume published by Marsilio Arte, the exhibition "Venezia. Alter mundus" presents 65 photographs by Alessandra Chemollo, offering a peculiar vision of the most photographed city in the world, suspended between past and future.