In the moment when the sky is getting dark and the street lamps around the piazza are beginning to light up.
In a time when a pademia is still going around, but everyone try to get back to their normal life.
At piazza Carignano, in the famous bar/restaurant, many people were still dining out, despite the Autumn cold and the Covid-19.
With the new DPCM, no dining in and out are allowed after 1800 hours, so this scene will not to be seen till god knows when....
Location : Piazza Carignano
Monday the new Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers came into effect, no dining in all bars and restaurants after 1800 hours, gym, cinema and theatres are to be closed.
This causes many discontents among the shop and restaurants owners, 2 protests were organised on Monday evening.
One protest was held in piazza Vittorio, it was a peaceful and respectful protest attended by many business owners who are painfully affected by the restriction.
The other one was held in piazza Castello, organised anonymously and among the protestants, there were some group of thugs who took the chance to create chaos and to rob.
Shortly after the beginning of the protest, bottles and paper bombs were thrown at the police in the piazza, provoked a confrontation between the police force and the protestants.
Then the groups were spreaded into the nearby streets and piazza, creating damages along the way. Breaking windows and doors of the shops and robbing the goods.
This is the aftermath of the night of that protest.
Location : Torino Center
There are many poster vendors in Torino, most of them are Africans. They display their posters on the ground and if you stopped to take a look at the posters, they will immediately approach you and try their best to convince you to buy one.
Often they setup their 'stand' under the arcade which ca be rather crowded in the evening and during the weekends, so when we walk past, we have to be very careful not to step onto the posters.
Walking along the river Po, saw this big bird, maybe is an heron resting on a branch by the river.
Without a long enough zoom, it was quite difficult to capture a shot, and basically I had only one chance to make the photo, because by then it would discover that someone is pointing something towards it and by instinct, it would fly away.
That was what happened exactly, just one click and it flew away.
Location : River Po
Torino is a beautiful city, regardless of the poor management of the governer. Art display can be seen everywhere, not limited in museums or art galleries.
Such as this copy of 'Bacco' of Caravaggio, it was painted on the road in via Roma, beautifully done. Of course it wasn't meant to last, after some days, it was long gone.
Location : Via Roma
In the heart of Turin, in Porta Palazzo, the community concierge is born: a place where you can find help for small errands in the post office, to shop at the market, or an IT support, small translations, and where to reweave relationships based on solidarity and on trust.
An old newsstand that does not forget its past, but returns to be the reference point in one of the most important squares of the city, straddling two very different but adjacent neighborhoods.
The culture shop - Community Concierge is located in the newsstand in Piazza della Repubblica 1 / F and with the direction of the Italian Network of Popular Culture gives life to a network of public and private subjects, from the world of commerce, of crafts, of the third sector and of active citizenship that puts the idea of proximity at the center.
The community porter's lodge, which had its first virtual baptism during the emergency, is therefore proposed as a physical and relational place where you can begin to rebuild a community of proximity, where you can trust each other, give and receive help, exchange information , suggestions and ideas.
Location : Porta Palazzo
The BBC included Ventura's works in the documentary about photography: “The Genius of Photography” (2007).
Three years later, he began his second major project: “Winter Stories” (2009), which became a book published by Aperture with a foreword by Eugenia Perry.
In that same period he began to work with different galleries in NY and in Europe followed by exhibitions and acquisitions from Museums and Photographic Institutions from around the world. In 2010 the Library of Congress of the U.S. acquired a collection of 142 Polaroids from his "War Souvenirs" series and the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston acquired in its permanent collection a print from his "Winter Stories".
In the following years he created other projects like “The Automaton”, published by Dewi Lewis in 2012 and “Behind The Walls” by Danilo Montanari Editore.
In 2010 he moved back to Italy, to Anghiari, a small town in Tuscany. There, in an old studio in the countryside, he began work on his project “Short Stories” using his family as his photographic subjects. In 2016 Aperture published a collection of this work in a book titled “Short Stories”.
In 2012 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (MACRO) presented a solo exhibition of Ventura's work titled "Lo Zuavo Scomparso". A book by the same name is published by Punctum.
Canadian filmmaker Helen Doyle included the work of Ventura in her 2013 movie “An Ocean of Images” In the same year the Swiss Television dedicated a short documentary to Ventura's work that was transmitted on Swiss National Television.
In 2015, the Dutch documentary film-maker, Erik Van Empel, directed a full-length documentary on Ventura titled “Paolo Ventura: The Vanishing Man” which won The Prix Italia in 2016 as the best movie in the TV Performing Arts category.
In the same year, Ventura began his first collaboration in theater. Working with director Rob Ashford, he realized the scenography for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
In 2018, Ventura continued his work in theater, collaborating with director Gabriele Lavia, to create the set design and costumes for Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera “Pagliacci” at the Teatro Regio in Turin.
Location : CAMERA
Ventura grew up in Milan with summers spent in the hilltops of Eastern Tuscany. His father, Piero Ventura, was a children's book author during the 1970s and 1980s. At the end of the 1980s, Ventura attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.
At the beginning of the 1990s he started working as a fashion photographer. In a few years he was working with fashion magazines such as Elle, MarieClaire, Amica, Vogue Gioiello, among others.
Toward the end of the 1990s, ten years into his career, Ventura gradually stepped out of the world of fashion photography and he moved to New York to pursue his personal artistic path. In his studio in Brooklyn he began to build and photograph small dioramas about World War II in Italy, based on memories and tales from his grandmother
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There is a hazy sense of timelessness in the photographs of Paolo Ventura. He makes images out of cardboard and various objects found from flea markets and even eBay, to build into what he calls the 'invented worlds' or 'ir-realities'.
He then photograhs this 'invented worlds' as if they wrere life-size. Results in a dreamy atmosphere, something between fantasy and memory.
Location : CAMERA
