The Waterfall Project

Olivo Barbieri is back with a new photographic project on the world’s greatest waterfalls: from Victoria Falls (on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe) to Iguazu (between Argentina and Brasil), from Khone Papeng (Laos/Cambodia) to Niagara Falls (Usa/Canada), The Waterfall Project presents a selection of massive water systems with their imposing, incessant energy flows, which – as usual – Barbieri portrays exclusively from an aerial perspective. Critic Walter Guadagnini writes in the introduction: “There is an evident technical expedient in this, and it is the choice to photograph from above, to place oneself in a privileged and anomalous condition. In the past, this expedient already gave rise to numerous readings, which range from acknowledging the historical roots of this perspective (going back all the way to Nadar’s photographs from a hot-air balloon) up to the socio-political implications deriving from 9/11”. Olivo Barbieri (born in 1954) started to exhibit in 1978. Since 1989, he’s been travelling regularly to the Far East, especially to China. In 2004 he inaugurated site specific_, a series of large format pictures exhibited in various towns, such as Rome, New York, Las Vegas, Shanghai, to name just a few. In 2008 he curated the TWIY project for the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.