In Veneto, 1984-89 by Guido Guidi

In Veneto, 1984-89 is photo book of previously unpublished photographs by Guido Guidi that he took between 1984 and 1989, using a Deardorff 8X10. The book features an area in the central Veneto, Italy known for “having rapidly turned into a deeply uncertain, marginal landscape, one intimately hierarchy-free”.

Venice is the regional capital of Veneto and it made me think of how the image of Venice is mostly through the eyes of tourists and its surrounding areas isn’t as well documented or known. A similar situation here in Dubai, where for many, Dubai is just Burj Khalifa and everything heading south of that part of town.

I’ve shared below a few images from the book. You can see more here and buy the book from the same link too.

The places he visited, in the provinces of Treviso, Vicenza, Padua and Venice, seem to be almost part of the same drawing, of the same place, bearing stark testimony to the process of change that has led to the transformation of a huge rural area, driving it into a form of fragmentation known as urban spread.

The photographs in these much-loved places seem to re-evoke the three truths described by Robert Adams in “Beauty in Photography”: geography, biography, and metaphor.