The highly personal and visionary style of Sarah Moon, the intensity of her gaze and the poetry of her images could not have found a more fitting venue for exhibition than the fascinating and empathetic setting of Palazzo Fortuny.

The soft light of the lagoon winter penetrating through the large windows of the Palazzo, the folds, pleats and plays of reflection created by the fabrics and fall of Fortuny’s dresses are the source of inspiration for this new exhibition that the great photographer has worked on over the years during her visits to the house/atelier.

There is a subtle correspondence between Mariano’s work and that of Sarah: for both, the painted, dressed or photographed figures become the inhabitants of a fabulous world, heroes of an inner universe harking to a timeless dimension. In her works, Sarah Moon binds together reality and a fairytale world: a world that re-emerges from the folds, from the brocades, from the moiré silk that shimmer with the slightest movement and oblige the memory to seek less fluctuating images and compose a more steady reality.

The soft shadows produced by the indirect light are at the origin of visions that seem to drift up from a dreamlike stock of fables and tell of the fleeting nature of beauty, the fragility of illusions, the nostalgia of childhood. One of the leading contemporary photographers of fashion, in 1972 the French artist was the first woman to take the photographs for a Pirelli calendar, and for many years she has broadened the horizons of her observation and artistic activity, focusing in particular on three areas – the evanescence of beauty, uncertainty and the passing of time – which she has explored also in video.

She has won many awards, including the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1995 and the Nadar in 2008.

Curators Alexandra de Léal and Adele Re Rebaudengo

Scientific coordination Daniela Ferretti