Winter Stories.

Winter Stories. Photographs by Paolo Ventura. Text by Eugenia Parry. Aperture, New York, 2009. 120 pp., 65 color illustrations, 11½x14".

"In this luxuriously produced limited edition, Paolo Ventura invents an imaginative series of photographs depicting scenes from the memory banks of an old circus performer as he looks back on his life.

What the performer revisits are not moments of great drama, but rather fleetingly recalled glimpses of an everyday life, 'images that he had thought to have never seen, quick moments he unknowingly observed as he raised his eyes to the clock hung at the corner of the block'.

Using his own childhood memories, beautiful miniature figures and sophisticated sets, Ventura re-envisions a simpler time in 1930s Italy, but his darker vision - with its shadowy backdrops and retreating figures - reminds us that this is not quite Eden. Skillfully crafted and hauntingly evocative, the work is filled with the sweet melancholy of an era, but remains timeless in its ability to resonate with contemporary audiences.

This monograph contains an engaging sequence of images, ephemera from Ventura’s working process and a selection of the artful drawings he creates as guides to his elaborate sets."