Adriatic Sea: Dancing People, 2016

Barbieri’s project ‘Adriatic Sea (staged) Dancing People’ explores memory and objectivity. In this staged, enhanced photo-series, Barbieri notes that everything in these photographs is real. The landscape, the choreography and the people, are all what Barbieri describes as ‘true’. The sea is a heightened shade of blue; a ‘paradigmatic blue’ that we see in our minds while remembering a day at the beach. Barbieri arranged the traditional folk dance—a popular jig from the Romagna region—to appear like a liberating ritual on this vibrant blue canvas. His actors bop up and down rhythmically on the shiny surface of the sea, like brushstrokes in a Matisse painting. This brand new book is published by Danilo Montanari with Leporello pages.