Documented between 2009 and 2012, Broken Dreams is a haunting photographic essay on the city of Nicosia and conflict areas in the north of Cyprus – a conflict which until today has not been politically resolved – that was exhibited during Pafos 2017. Broken Dreams focuses on the emotional stalemate through lingering remnants of military activity and abandoned vernacular architecture. Uninhabited or partially demolished, these structures serve as uncomfortable monuments of Cyprus’s recent history.
The exhibition is part of A Tale of Two Cities – a cross-cultural photography exhibition by artist and photographer David Pisani, whose work explores architectural poetry as a metaphor for the human condition. The prints exhibited are all hand printed by the phoographer himself on silver gelatin paper.
Pisani’s work has been exhibited at the prestigious Biennale of Photography in Paris in 1996 and was entered in the Permanent collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in June 2000.
This exhibition brings two very different cities and histories together through the lens of photographer David Pisani.
Combining the photographer’s 29-year documentation of Valletta’s buildings and his photographic essay on Nicosia and conflict areas in the north of Cyprus, A Tale of Two Cities offers a crosscultural dialogue between two Mediterranean Island states whose architecture voices a powerful narrative of social displacement.
The exhibition will be held in Pafos, Cyprus, in 2017, and in Malta in 2018.