The memory of the present
by Lorenzo Valloriani
portfolio winners call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2021', 2021
Category: Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts
The memory of the present is a photographic exploration of the actual Tuscan area in Italy, photographed between 2017 and 2021 in over 50 urban and suburban locations. This ongoing project captures the most mundane and typical elements of landscape - countryside crossroads, vernacular architectures, river banks, modern churches, ruins of ancient walls, postwar buildings infrastructure - that could be seen virtually in any tuscan locality. I visit places that are neither city nor countryside, hybrid places, undefined and in the making. They have emerged from that disordered urbanisation which has been developing over the past 70 years.
It's also a work about collective memory and archetypes: the project focuses expecially on the altered landscape, urban and rural in equal parts, trying to emerging, to eyes and mind, the image of the everyday landscape that we tend unconsciously to suppress.