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Irene Kung has always been fascinated by trees – both their shape and their symbolic meaning. In Trees she deploys her great skill as a photographer to portray trees old and young, using the play of light to create stunningly beautiful compositions. Every leaf is shown in full detail. Kung imbues her photos with a poetic and very particular atmosphere. Whether they are taken in the sun or the rain, whether they show a tiny detail or the entire tree, whether they frame the foliage frontally or from above, the photos always highlight the tree's beauty and uniqueness. These striking images capture the spirit of the place and transmit it on photographic paper, as pure, intact and free from any contamination and urban interference as it should be. Kung's is a solitary process, waiting patiently, seeking the perfect photo. She does not escape from the void, she creates it on purpose and the void slowly embraces the subject becoming itself protagonist of the image.
Irene Kung was born in 1958 in Switzerland, where she studied Visual Arts. She began her career as a painter and soon moved to Italy, becoming one of the most interesting artistic personalities in the international scene. In recent years, she worked in closer contact with photography exposing in solo and collective exhibitions in the most famous art galleries and museums, such as: Photographica Fine Art (Lugano), Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia (Milan), Goedhuis Contemporary (London andNew York) and Galleria Bonomo (Bari and Rome). Furthermore, she participated to the main international art fairs, including Paris Photo (Paris), Art Fair (Bologna), Artissima (Turin) and Art Basel (Miami Beach). In 2012 Contrasto published her book The Invisible City.
Giovanna Calvenzi graduated in Literature in 1973, and she taught history of photography and photographic language for eleven years while collaborating with numerous magazines. Since 1985, she has been working as a photo editor for several newspapers. Since 2012 she is an image consultant for the Gruppo Periodici San Paolo, in Milan. She teaches photo-editing at the Centro di Formazione Professionale Riccardo Bauer of Milan. She collaborated to the realization of many photographic exhibitions and books and she also conducts research on contemporary photography. In 1998 she was artistic director of Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie of Arles, in 2002 she was guest curator di PhotoEspaña in Madrid, and in 2014 she was the art representative of the Mois de la Photo in Paris.
