Walter Guadagnini

Camera is an exhibition center for Italian and international photography. A center for image education, with meetings, laboratories, workshops. A study center for the enhancement of the photographic heritage.

From September 17th to December 8th CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia hosts "Carousel", a path within the eclectic career of Paolo Ventura (Milan, 1968), one of the most recognized and appreciated Italian artists in Italy and abroad.

On this occasion the rooms of the museum host some of the most suggestive works of the last fifteen years - from various collections, as well as from the artist's studio - in an absolute mixture of languages that includes drawings, models, sets, papier-mâché masks and theatrical costumes. There is no lack of the most iconic projects of the first phase of his production: the already mentioned "War Souvenir", "L'Automa" and a selection from "Winter Stories", in which the protagonists of the narrations are puppets and the environments of the small theater sets built by Ventura himself on the table of his studio.

It is not, however, a linear path nor a retrospective, but rather a staging of all the most frequent themes of his poetics, among which double and fiction stand out.

Curated by Walter Guadagnini, with the collaboration of Monica Poggi, the exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of the first monograph dedicated to the work of Paolo Ventura. The volume, published by Silvana Editoriale, retraces fifteen years of the artist's activity through the presentation of twenty-one series produced from 2015 to the present day, offering a singular and absolutely original interpretation of staged photography. In addition to the essay by Guadagnini himself, it contains a text by writer and literary critic Francine Prose and a long interview with Monica Poggi.


The activity of CAMERA is realized thanks to Intesa Sanpaolo, Lavazza, Eni in particular the exhibition and cultural programming is supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation.