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Four Elements - 16 photographs exhibited as part of Caravaggio e la Fuga. The exhibition also included over 80 16th - 18th century landscape paintings, including one by Caravaggio.

“Quattro Elementi” (Four Elements) is a series of large black-and-white photographs commissioned by the Doria Pamphilj Museum, Rome, and based on images taken in the Italian mountains since 2004. My research involved translating my experience of the landscape into visual imagery. In 2010 I was invited to exhibit 16 photographs from the series in “Caravaggio e la Fuga” at the Palazzo Principe in Genoa. The exhibition included over 80 16th - 18th century landscape paintings, including one by Caravaggio. Significantly, my photographs constituted the only modern art work selected for the show.

Although I was influenced by landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, the originality of my work lies in my engagement with conveying place as embodied experience.

I revisited the original sites, taking 160 additional shots from which I chose sixteen, based on rigorous formal criteria, which I felt best characterised the “Four Elements”. I worked in black-and-white to emphasise the purity of form, expressive force and timeless quality of the locations, and printed on a 2 x 1 metre scale to emphasise the photographs’ status as art objects.

The exhibition ran from March – September 2010 and had over 22,000 visitors. The catalogue had a chapter dedicated to my work, which also received extensive coverage in conventional media, including over 10 journals and newspapers in Italy, as well as the Spectator.

Significant effort was devoted to broadening the exhibition’s appeal. The challenge to reach a different art audience was met by promoting the work on Facebook, successfully using game applications, advertisements, and other means. Visitors could also download an app on iTunes, walk around with the audio information, then take it away as a souvenir. Many people came because of these promotions, and the impact of the exhibition extended into people’s own homes.