Costa di Sorrento

The English photographer-documentary filmmaker John Davies is known for his lucid studies of the rural and urbanised landscape. What began in the mid-1970s with an extensive analysis of the “savage” beauty of the British Isles, evolved at the beginning of the 1980s into an articulated documentation of the territories of the post-industrial era. From this vantage point Davies’ investigation of the Italian litoral between Rome and Naples for "atlante italiano 007. Rischio paesaggio" examines the effects of tourism on the landscape. His images shed light on the boom in the expansion of hotels and the needs of mass tourism that has broken the spell of the natural setting of the Costa Pontina. The concept of the veduta in its most Romantic, idyllic and reassuring connotation is stripped away in Davies’ disenchanted photographs to reveal how the postcard image – the temptation offered by any travel agency – is merely an illusion.