These images are from an ongoing series new series of hand embroideredphotographs taking the city of Venice as subject and structure. At one time the most prosperous and populated city in Europe, it is today a city where tourists outnumber residents and is particularly challenged by rising sea levels. In the series, the photographs are interrupted and recreated through hand sewn embroidery that echoes the visual language of Venetian lace, historically one of the city’s most coveted exports, but which today largely survives through mechanized production. The interventions veil and fracture the photographic surface. The interruption of the image functions as a material metaphor for the city itself: porous, vulnerable and repeatedly repaired. The embroidery also introduces slowness and time, countering the accelerated mass consumption of the city through tourism and social media. While the work is rooted in Venice and its specific material histories, the project considers place more generally and how sites marked by cultural value become transformed into surfaces that are visited, extracted and consumed raising broader questions about permanence and loss.
Note: Diane Meyer is only at the very early stages of this project - She only has two images at this
point…