Paolo Ventura

Paolo Ventura

#Photographe
Born in Milan, a degree obtained at the Accademia Di Belle Areti, Brera Milan, after a prominent career as a fashion photographer he now devotes his time to personal projects. He collaborates with important publications such as The New Yorker, Harper's, Dea Magazine, New Yok Times. He lives an works between New York and Anghiari, Tuscany.
SELECTED INDIVIDUAL EXIBITIONS
• Pietra Santa, Incamera Gallery, 2007
• Milan, Forma, int. center of photography, 2006
• Arles, Rencontres int. de la photographie, 2006
• New York, HastedHunt Gallery, 2006
• Krakow, photomonth, 2006
• Moscow, Photobiennale, Gallery A-3, 2006
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
• New York, On The Wall, Aperture Gallery, 2007
• Milano, Luci Su Milano, New art acquisitions of Unicredit Group, Spazio Milano, 2007
• Paris, Une histoire privee, la photographie contemporaine italienne dans la collection Cotroneo,MEP- Maison Européenne de la Photographie, 2006
• Milan, Lo sguardo italiano, Rotonda Besana, 2005
BOOKS
• War Souvenir, Contrasto 2006

War Souvenir
It is World War II. The corpse of a soldier lies someplace in the mountains of central Italy; in Milan, a German hidden in the cellar of a house in Via Monte Nevoso is captured by partisans; in Turin, German soldiers look at the body of a member of the partisan organization, who has just been killed in a shoot-out. Ventura represents war as a game in a grotesque dollhouse, but he does so without abandoning either war's emotion or its pain. His photographs constitute a profound and surprising reflection on the power of documentation and memory. About War Souvenir, Francine Prose wrote: "Looking at these photos creates a moment of suspension, a melancholy hush in which we almost imagine we can hear whispers about the riddles of life and death, time and age, childhood innocence and adult knowledge, art, war, history, and such questions as: What are we seeing? What do we think we are seeing? And what we are concluding about what we think we are seeing?"