La Ventura

“La Ventura” conjures a female essence — a Greek goddess, a masterpiece — while whimsically recalling l’avventura, Italian for adventure: the imaginary escapades summoned by a refined eroticism, waiting beyond the frame, as with Ventura’s earlier passion, Orientalism. Collecting being a practice of appreciation, attainment and, eventually, possession, an analogy emerges between the two.

Asked why he collects nudes, Ventura answers with Ralph Gibson: “The Willendorf Venus is said to date from 25,000 BC. That is old enough for me to believe in the subject.” Robert Adams observed that collectors share with artists “a narrow but intense sensualism” — an enjoyment all the stronger, in photography, for the subtle distinctions involved. The impulse to collect, joined to photography and to the frisson of nudity, points to a gratification as intrinsic as it is visual.

Pursued intuitively and impulsively — in keeping with William Bronk’s proposition that “ideas are always wrong” — the collection is the tale, the diary, almost the holy book of this impulse. The selection may be envisaged as three states of matter: a fluid nudity at the centre, where glamour steps forward under the spotlights; the rigid, dark underworlds below, where lust intertwines with violence; and above, images endowed with the lightness, volatility and delicacy of the form — held throughout in the chords between flesh and nudity, desire and shame.