Paolo Ventura
Italian photographer Paolo Ventura (b. 1968) is known for constructing and photographing elaborate dioramas to tell cinematic visual stories. Ventura is involved in the entire artistic process - from constructing and painting the small scale scenes, photographing the sets, and hand painting the photographs. He will often collage figures, portraits of himself and his family, to the surface of the photographs. The works, evocative of 1940s and 50s Italian Neorealism film, are both sweet and sorrowful.
Paolo Ventura studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan in the early 1990s. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Forma International Center for Photography, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art of Roma (MACRO), Rome; The Hague Museum of Photography, The Hague; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome and during the Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles. In 2012, he was selected to create a series of works for the Italian national pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, he also received a commission from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. And recently Ventura was invited for a commission by the MART, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy. Four monographs of Paolo Ventura's work have been published: War Souvenir (Contrasto, 2006), Winter Stories (Aperture and Contrasto, 2009), The Automaton (Peliti Asociati, 2011) and Lo Zuavo Scomparso (Punctum Press, 2012). Ventura currently lives and works in Milan.