VENICE AND THE GHETTO “Le cose della Vita,” Portraits of Jews

Luzzattos by Paolo Della CorteBy Paolo Della Corte*

I designed “Le cose della Vita” – “The things in life” as a multimedia photographic project involving several steps. The aim of my work is to trace a collective history starting from the individual story of some relevant persons in the Italian Jewish Community. Each step consists of a gallery of portraits representing the subjects in their everyday lives, in a familiar context and surrounded by daily objects. We cannot look at the image in a passive way, as we are invited to have an in-depth observation of the composition, which involves the viewer in a play of cross-references and connections between the present and the past, between the storyteller and the listener. Every portrait provides six starting points for the development of six stories: each plot appears in opening panel of the exposition. The visitor is then encouraged to decode the answers within the different portraits, with the help of a number complete figure captions describing the symbolic items and the reason why they have been chosen. In addition to the figure captions, to help the viewers in their experience, there is a range of texts and further audio-visual materials, along with a series of geolocation information.

*Paolo Della Corte is a photographer. The article has been translated by Isabella Favero, student at the Scuola superiore interpreti e traduttori di Trieste, ‎who is doing her apprenticeship in the newsroom of Pagine Ebraiche. The picture by Paolo Della Corte portrays Amos Luzzatto and his wife Laura Luzzatto Voghera.

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