The Automaton - Paolo Ventura

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Résumé :
The Automaton is based on a story told to Paolo Ventura as a child. It centres on an elderly, Jewish watchmaker
living in the Venice ghetto in 1943, one of the darkest periods of Nazi occupation and the rule of the fascist regime
in Italy. The city where the watchmaker has lived his entire life, now desolate and fearful, is the stage on which the
story unfolds. The old man decides to build an automaton (a robot), to keep him company while he awaits the
arrival of the fascist police who will deport the last of the remaining Jews from the ghetto.
Paolo Ventura is internationally known for the complex creative process he adopts. Having created the narrative
script for the book, he then builds elaborate models and miniature figurines in his studio and incorporates them in
what almost appear as film sets. These are then photographed and his final artworks are the photographs of these
constructed tableaux. The Automaton is a photographic narrative from beginning to end.
Paolo Ventura's work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe and the States. In autumn 2011 he had three
exhibitions of his work on show; in the Italian national pavilion at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale; in the
exhibition Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities at the Museum of Art and Design, New York and at
the Hasted Kraeutler Gallery, New York. His works have been acquired by prominent public collections including
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Maison Europ?en de la Photographie,
Paris and the Martin Margulies Collection in Miami, Florida. Two monographs of Paolo Ventura?s work have
been published: War Souvenir (Contrasto, 2006) and Winter Stories (Aperture and Contrasto, 2009). He is also
included in the new publication Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography (Aperture / Library of
Congress, 2011).
Born in Milan, Paolo Ventura currently lives and works in New York