Giovanna Silva and Emilia Giorgi: Saudiscapes

Nero, 2024, hardcover, 184 pages, 30.3 x 21.5 cm

Saudi Arabia had been inaccessible to ordinary visitors for about ten years, until fall 2019, thereinafter it has been possible to enter the country with an electronic tourist visa. In the suspended time that preceded this event, the architecture firm Schiattarella Associati invited photographer Giovanna Silva and curator Emilia Giorgi to set off on a journey—both physical and mental—in the country, trying to unearth the often minute and hidden traces of past buildings and historical tradition in the cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, now at the center of vast operations of redefinition, from an architectural, urban and social point of view.