​In this project I am exploring the plain around the Treviso province in the north-east of Italy. an endless patchwork of small towns, industries and connecting roads, grown out of the boom years of the 70s and 80s. This is where I have lived as a foreigner for the past twenty years. It's a land rooted in Veneto tradition, where every village has it's local 'sagra' and summer festival, where dialects and cuisine can change within a few kilometres. At the same time this territory is experiencing demographic and cultural change; foreigners are moving in, the elderly are moving on, old buildings stand empty and new houses, factories and shopping centres rise around them. It's not a landscape, or a people, that's easy to describe. There are too many contradictions.

 

As an Englishman, I guess I moved here with a certain preconception of what Italian landscape should look like, something well established by the dominance of Italian culture in European art-history. The pianura around Treviso doesn't conform to that ideal, although there are still glimpses of cultural heritage amongst the concrete, the vineyards and the endless signage that clings to every road once out of town. Despite this, I have to admit that I like it here. It's a plain landscape in every sense of the word but it's also alive, it's dynamic and enjoyably uncomfortable. I might not understand it, I can't quite grasp it, but I find it far more rewarding to photograph than the UNESCO hills and Prosecco vineyards that lie just a short drive to the north. 

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I like to think of this project not so much as a critique, but a celebration. And like the landscape itself, it's a work in progress.

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