Fireworks & Scandinavian Photography: Norden

Until Feb. 18:  NORDEN: MAN AND NATURE.  Villa Bardini, Costa San Giorgio 2.  Open Tuesday – Sunday 10 am – 6 pm.  Admission:  €8.  Residents of Florence, Arezzo and Grosseto have free access to the adjacent Bardini garden.

Past and present blur together in a new photography show titled “Norden: Man and Nature between Scandinavia and Baltic States,” a platform illustrating people and places that Luca Berti, a transplanted Florentine, experienced during his 10 year residency in the Nordic countries.

On February 24, Villa Bardini, the exhibition venue, is also offering a visit to the show starting at what would have been the normal closing time (6 pm), which will be followed by a brief fireworks display at 8 pm, then a talk and a buffet dinner.

The fireworks are in solidarity with and meant to promote the spectacular annual display on the night of June 24, a legal holiday in Florence in honor of the city’s patron, St. John the Baptist.  Before the dinner and drinks (accessible with a minimum €10 donation, there will a brief lecture on the history of this important centuries’ old holiday and its traditions.

Luca Berti, who started his career as a fashion photographer, made a drastic decision to leave his city lifestyle and pursue his interest in rural landscape photography.  The current exhibition touches on his vast repertoire, and it becomes apparent that the past plays a monumental role in influencing Berti’s work.

The 60 black-and-white photographs in “Norden” document the “rural realities” of the Scandinavian and Baltic countryside through an anthropological and environmental lens.

To the visitor it becomes quickly apparent that the past plays a monumental role in influencing each exhibit.  Each piece in the collection is extremely striking and was selected with a purpose.

Some of the most stunning photos in “Norden” include a waterfall in the Norwegian forest, a church and cemetery nestled into the Norwegian mountainside, a young Latvian girl with long blonde hair, and a weathered Swedish farmer holding a scythe in front of his fields.

Berti hopes to remind his viewers that we live in two, co-existing venues: our modern, technology-centered world and the world of our ancestors.  (molly hamilton)