The motorway has a powerful – and at times harsh – impact on the landscape. This is not news, but we now have the tools and awareness to better understand its implications and long-term effects. In recent decades, “building the motorway” has come to mean caring for it – upgrading, modernising, and making it more efficient and safe.
At the same time, the adventurous coexistence between Italy’s motorways and its diverse landscape has produced a unique aesthetic – one that is at once striking and raw – bringing citizens of the “bel paese” closer to the beauty of their country.
To capture the unique elements of this sublime aesthetic with an external gaze, Iwan Baan took to the skies in a helicopter, photographing for weeks the most telling intersections between the motorway network and the contexts it traverses – from the intricate urban morphology of Genoa to untouched wilderness in some of the country’s most remote regions.
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan undertakes a visual journey through the present-day infrastructure of Italy: from the Ligurian region to Lake Iseo, across Veneto, gliding along the Adriatic coast, tracing the bridges that cross the Apennines, and continuing southward to Irpinia.
His aerial photographs, captured over multiple flights, portray the motorway as both a visual and physical axis around which old and new places converge – a line seamlessly integrated into the layered fabric of the contemporary landscape. At once familiar and evocative, this route reveals unexpected and compelling perspectives.
One of the world’s leading architectural photographers, Baan has collaborated with many of the most influential architects of our time – from Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron to Zaha Hadid and Toyo Ito. With a background in documentary photography, Baan has developed a distinct interest in portraying architectural space as a complex organism embedded in its broader context.
