The photographs shown here are part of Cristiano Volk’s series “Marmo”, which in Italian means “marble”. Both words derive from the ancient Greek “μάρμαρος”, which meant something like “shining stone”.

Light and stone are some of the main ingredients of Cristiano’s photographic research into the surface of Venice. Others are baroque theatre, sculpture, architecture and painting, with a constant reference to the concept of “Vanitas” (the series includes various photographs of bubbles, skulls, and other references to mortality, as opposed to the apparent immortality of marble and stone). Venice is a vain city, whose marketed beauty is also based on the asset of its precariousness (Venice is also a sinking city).

Cristiano’s colour work also relates to the venetian pictorial technique of “tonalismo”, which meant depth was achieved by means of the use of colour. In “Marmo”, the use of flash and of a limited colour palette points to a different end: illusionistic space is constantly challenged by overexposed areas and awkward angles, the marble curtain of representation is thus magically thrust aside to reveal the open eyes and mouth of Medusa, and beyond them the whiteness of blank pixels. Cristiano’s Venice is also an empty city (the Latin word “vanus”, after all, means empty).