Romance Industry

From the "In 1998, John Gossage was invited by Sandro Mescola of the Comune di Venezia to participate in a research project on the industrial transformation of the city of Venice. The aim of the project was to photograph "the substantial economic and social changes underway in its industrial areas." Although this was something he felt he knew little about, Gossage was moved to accept the invitation -- not least because the project had been started a few years earlier, with a group of Italian photographers, by Paolo Costantini before his untimely death from cancer. For Gossage, the outcome of this relatively straightforward documentary process proved to be quite different from his expectations. His belief that he would learn some of the facts about the place was unfulfilled; instead, he found things that could only heighten his curiosity. The results of Gossage's visual exploration of industrial Venice make a compelling body of work."