Postcards from the Dolomites
by Massimo Crivellari
portfolio shortlisted call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023', 2023
Category: Anthropology and Territories
The Italian mountains, the Dolomites particularly, became in the 19th century the playground and conquering ground for groups of mountaineers, especially English and German people. In those years, the Dolomites were still a wild land, populated by poor people, mostly hunters and farmers.
The development of mountaineering turned them soon into guides and hoteliers and gave birth to the myth of the Alps. In the following years, the most famous places and landscapes of the Dolomites became the romantic subjects of touristic postcards.
My research presents many of those places as they are today: Cortina d'Ampezzo, the mountain passes, Lake Misurina, South Tyrol. It focalizes on how the Dolomites iconic landscape has been transformed in a huge amusement park for tourists. Nowadays day-trippers, motorcyclists, skiers, athletes, and many more use the Dolomites in an invasive way, without any respect. The romantic and wild places of the 19th century are dishonored by a hit-and-run tourism and exploited for record-breaking sporting purposes only.
My images want to be the current "postcards" of those wounded mountains, protected by UNESCO but violated by the laws of a global economy.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023