Paolo Ventura

Ventura grew up in Milan with summers spent in the hilltops of Eastern Tuscany. His father, Piero Ventura, was a children's book author during the 1970s and 1980s. At the end of the 1980s, Ventura attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.[1]

At the beginning of the 1990s he started working as a fashion photographer. In a few years he was working with fashion magazines such as Elle, MarieClaire, Amica, Vogue Gioiello, among others.[2]

Toward the end of the 1990s, ten years into his career, Ventura gradually stepped out of the world of fashion photography and he moved to New York to pursue his personal artistic path. In his studio in Brooklyn he began to build and photograph small dioramas about World War II in Italy, based on memories and tales from his grandmother.[3]

In 2006 Contrasto published “War Souvenirs", a collection of this work, with a foreword by the American writer Francine Prose.[4]

The work was followed by a number of exhibitions worldwide.

The BBC included Ventura's works in the documentary about photography: “The Genius of Photography” (2007).

Three years later, he began his second major project: “Winter Stories” (2009), which became a book published by Aperture with a foreword by Eugenia Perry.[5]

In that same period he began to work with different galleries in NY and in Europe followed by exhibitions and acquisitions from Museums and Photographic Institutions from around the world. In 2010 the Library of Congress of the U.S. acquired a collection of 142 Polaroids from his "War Souvenirs" series[6] and the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston acquired in its permanent collection a print from his "Winter Stories".[7]

In the following years he created other projects like “The Automaton”, published by Dewi Lewis in 2012 and “Behind The Walls” by Danilo Montanari Editore.

In 2010 he moved back to Italy, to Anghiari, a small town in Tuscany. There, in an old studio in the countryside, he began work on his project “Short Stories” using his family as his photographic subjects.[8] In 2016 Aperture published a collection of this work in a book titled “Short Stories”.

In 2012 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (MACRO) presented a solo exhibition of Ventura's work titled "Lo Zuavo Scomparso". A book by the same name is published by Punctum.

Canadian filmmaker Helen Doyle included the work of Ventura in her 2013 movie “An Ocean of Images” In the same year the Swiss Television dedicated a short documentary to Ventura's work that was transmitted on Swiss National Television.

In 2015, the Dutch documentary film-maker, Erik Van Empel, directed a full-length documentary on Ventura titled “Paolo Ventura: The Vanishing Man” which won The Prix Italia in 2016 as the best movie in the TV Performing Arts category.[9]

In the same year, Ventura began his first collaboration in theater.[10] Working with director Rob Ashford, he realized the scenography for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.[11]

In 2018, Ventura continued his work in theater, collaborating with director Gabriele Lavia, to create the set design and costumes for Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera “Pagliacci” at the Teatro Regio in Turin.[12]

• "Autobiografia di un Impostore" narrata da Laura Leonelli, Johan & Levi editore, 2021
• "Paolo Ventura, Photographs and Drawings", Silvana Editoriale, 2020
• "Short Stories", Aperture, 2016
• "The Automaton", Dewi Lewis, 2012
• "Lo Zuavo Scomparso", Punctum Press, 2012
• "War Souvenirs", Contrasto Editore, 2006
• "Winter Stories", Aperture, 2009

• Official Website
• Flatland Gallery, Amsterdam
• Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis
• Baton Gallery, Seoul
• Gallery Baton on Ocula