Overview

It is World War II. The corpse of a soldier lies some place in the mountains of central Italy; in Milan, a German hidden in the cellar of a house in Via Monte Nevoso is captured by partisans; in Turin, German soldiers look at the body of a member of the partisan organization, who has just been killed in a shoot-out. These are only three of the photographs Paolo Ventura has included in War Souvenir, a book which reflects and recounts the crude intensity of that war. But unlike the work of other photographers, Venturas pictures are clearly fake: the images are the result of meticulous preparation, and each one presents a non-existent but apparently truthful memory. The soldiers are dummies, the scenes and objects in which they act are all in miniature. Ventura represents war as a game in a grotesque dollhouse, but he does so without abandoning either wars emotion or its pain. His photographs constitute a profound and surprising reflection on the power of documentation and memory.

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9788889032978

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Ventura, like Arbus, began as a fashion photographer. He spent his childhood listening to war stories. The author of ten highly acclaimed novels, Prose is a contributing editor at Harper's and writes on art for the Wall Street Journal.

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