Lagoonal Capriccio

Lagoonal Capriccio by Matteo de Mayda and Amina Chouairi explores the Venice Lagoon as a complex hydro-environmental system in which natural processes and anthropic devices are historically intertwined. The project focuses on the Casse di Colmata, infrastructures generated through land reclamation and industrial expansion, now partially decommissioned, which function as transitional spaces between erosion, sedimentation, and biological recolonisation.
Through contemporary photographs and archival images, the lagoon emerges as a heterogeneous operative field, defined by the interaction between ecologies, technical infrastructures, and anthropic transformations stratified over time. Archival sources do not serve an illustrative function, but rather operate as critical tools capable of rendering legible the morphological, economic, and political transformations of the territory. The dialogue between scientific research and photographic practice thus restores the lagoon as an unstable, vulnerable landscape in continuous redefinition.

Lagoonal Capriccio forms part of the broader research project Unruly Geobodies, developed by Amina Chouairi and Matteo de Mayda on the post-industrial landscape of the Casse di Colmata in the Venice Lagoon.
Archive images courtesy of the Archivio Ente Zona Industriale di Porto Marghera.

Published by Witty Books, Torino 2026