When the Sea Moves
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION
by Gaetano Crivaro
Shot over the course of four years, the photographs in this exhibition were taken on the margins of the making of the film What Remains When the Sea Moves, which explores the impact of tourism on the coasts of Sardinia, investigating how the landscape has been transformed by its growing vocation for tourism.
Captured with an Olympus OM-10 using Ilford FP4 Plus 125 and Ilford HP5 Plus 400 black and white film, developed manually and then digitally scanned, these images seem to come from another time. They were later digitally recolored—not to reproduce the “true” color of things, but to question our way of seeing and assigning meaning to what we observe. If today the digital tends to imitate film, here the opposite happens: film is digitally manipulated to shift the meaning of the image elsewhere—to an uncertain space between reality and fabrication. The result is an image that retains its grain and imperfections, yet introduces a subtle tension between truth and fiction—between what is real and what merely appears to be.
The end of each summer season leaves behind empty spaces, footprints of vanished tourists, and absences—but also indelible marks that deeply affect the environment. Beaches are a fragile ecosystem, constantly torn between tourist appeal and the need for environmental protection. They are spaces of transit and consumption, where the landscape is shaped by desire, by a deeply human urge to bend nature to one’s needs.
The photographs do not directly document this conflict, but convey its atmosphere: they explore what remains, what emerges in the voids, in marginal details, in silences.
A selection of the photographs is part of a traveling exhibition which, after passing through various venues, will arrive in December 2025 (from the 4th to the 21st) at the Siotto Gallery in Cagliari.
A project curated by
L’ambulante, with the participation of Ruga film
With the support of
Fondazione di Sardegna
In collaboration with
Fondazione di ricerca Giuseppe Siotto
Rebelterra
Cultina
Photographs by
Gaetano Crivaro
Developed at
Casa Zaru – Genoni and Cultina Artlab
Printing and framing by
Montetullio Lab – Martina Franca – TA
