Patrizia Zelano Acqua Alta a Venezia
Acqua Alta a Venezia #24, 2019
©Patrizia Zelano and Zamagni d’Arte, Rimini
Series
On 13 November 2019, Venice was submerged by one of the highest tides ever recorded. Books that Zelano rescued — encyclopedias, scientific treatises, literary texts — became the core of her investigation into the boundary between dissolution and resistance.
The series is a four-step journey through the history of art. The first three photos (#01, #02, #07) take us from antiquity to the Middle Ages, where books become relics. The second section features a book with water-like accordion pages (#24). The volumes in the third section (#30, #32, #33, #34) have become waves and stormy seascapes.
In the ninth image (#39), books are dried, stacked like a Flemish still life. The final photograph (#53) captures the paradox of the lagoon with its unique beauty and the threat it faces.
For Zelano, saving books is a gesture aimed at restoring to knowledge its evocative power. Each photograph urges us to reconsider our relationship with the Earth, culture and fragility.
About the photographer
Brescia, Italy, 1964
Italian
Verucchio, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
About Patrizia Zelano
Zelano holds a degree in pre-Columbian ethno-archaeology from the University of Bologna. She was taught by the photographer Guido Guidi at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Ravenna, and he has remained a strong influence on her artistic research and development. Zelano sees her work as a form of self-analysis and a metaphorical way to evoke feelings.
Her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including at Galleria dell’Immagine, Rimini (2007); Luci dell’Islam exhibition, Prato, Italy (2007); Centro Italiano della Fotografia d’Autore, Bibbiena, Italy (2010); L’Arsenal de Metz, France (2011); Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida (2012); National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMIST), Athens (2013); IPP (International Photo Project), Spazio Soderini, Milan (2015) and CIBUS, Parma, Italy (2022).
Zelano has won numerous awards, including first prizes at SI Fest, Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy (2006 and 2009) and Festival di Fotografia di Napoli, Archivio Fotografico Parisio, Naples (2009). She has also won the Wannabee Prize International Art Contest (2014) and the Fondo Malerba award (2015), both in Milan.
She is the author of Soul Trigger: A Perceptual Oracle with 79 New Arcana — A Journey with Art and Magic, published by Pazzini editore in 2019.
Zelano has previously worked as a researcher at the Dinz Rialto Museum of Extra-European Cultures, Rimini, and in Nazca, Peru.