VENICE IN MASSIMO LISTRI’S PHOTOGRAPHS

Venice, Museo Correr
20 July – 20 October 2022

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The beautiful Massimo Listri’s photographs, which will be on display in the Correr Museum from 20 July, offer a harmonious and coherent view of how the architectural monumentality of our spaces are today, many of which have recently undergone important restoration work, of the beauty of our rooms, the long, airy connecting porteghi, the exhibition itineraries that are always capable of surprising us.

Listri’s meticulous eye adept at revealing the soul of places, the density of the light and colour that pervades them in the changing hours of the day, the lightness of that enfilade of rooms that, connected one to another, characterise the perspective suite of rooms of the Correr or the Royal Palace, the majestic grandeur of the places dedicated to the care and defence of the Republic. A cultured and knowledgeable eye imbued with history of art, but at the same time capable of making an extremely original synthesis of what is sometimes an excessive proliferation of decoration and architecture in the rooms. An unconventional eye that sees what others do not, that recoils from the banality that Venice and its monuments often entice one to photograph, that holds its breath before framing the object and that catches the perfect instance of that mysterious aura which inhabits the Museum’s rooms.

His secret is largely found in the use of natural light, avoiding complicity with artifices or over-sophisticated technology, although in post-production his skilful hand does not disdain from the use of putting into focus or perspective cuts, thereby fully satisfying his desire to create “a work of art within the work of art” through his photographs. With this extraordinary view, these and hundreds of images have been shot, which finally give us back – thanks to his unmistakable hand – a harmonious idea of the multiplicity and disciplinary complexity that characterise our collections and exhibition spaces. It is a restitution of unprecedented views that are capable of surprising who, like us, comes into contact with the museum’s rooms every day.