Flooded Souls

by Paolo della Corte

Venice is Lagoon.

FLOODED SOULS – the end 2020/2024 is a research and investigative project that focuses on the delicate Venetian lagoon system, which today is under threat due to pollution and waste.

Starting with still-life images of characteristic lagoon fish printed on cotton canvas, Paolo della Corte then immerses these canvases in various points of the lagoon, leaving them in the water for a period of 6 to 8 weeks.

The canvases are left to decay in contact with the water, becoming covered in algae, mud, and mollusks. Depending on exposure to light, currents, depth, and the specific point of immersion, when they are retrieved, they transform into something "other," revealing the state of the lagoon and the level of pollution in the immersion area.

Taking photographs and entrusting them to chance—to what they can reveal after prolonged submersion—is not only a reference to the very nature of photography itself but also to the uncommon uniqueness and authorship of the resulting image, which becomes unparalleled and subject to fate.

The scientific departments of Ca' Foscari University (DSMN and DAIS) and the CNR – Institute of Polar Sciences have taken on the challenge of Paolo della Corte's works, analyzing them from a chemical and morphological perspective after their immersion in water.

The idea was to correlate the chemical-physical changes occurring on the canvases underwater with the lagoon environment and some of the consequences of human activities in the lagoon. Optical and chemical analyses reveal how the canvases transform in different areas of the lagoon.