RECLAIMED FIELDS

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A photographic project that was developed during my artistic residency at the Fondaziun Nairs. In this closed, narrow valley, this self-contained almost intimate environment of Unterengadin, tourism is one of the main business activity sectors. Or at least it was... Apparently there has been a migration of interest, from big hotels to smaller structures. The abandoned hotels at Vulpera and Nairs reminded me of witnesses of a crime scene.

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During my walks i gradually discovered smaller and hidden relicts of this touristic infrastructure network, landscape interventions that remain deactivated. One can feel the ambience of decadence of those hotels, golf tracks and sport fields and wonder about the reasons behind it. Nature reclaimes the human ruins really fast. Questions are raised as to what happens to the landscape after the cease of human activity. Are we a civilization of thoughtless producing and discarding?

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On the other hand, those tennisfields, are hybrid landscapes, half cultural, half natural, a scenery that keeps its own secrets. I visited them seceral times and was allured by the ambience surrounding them. Is this the age of hyper-romanticism?