Dubai under construction

Massimiliano Farina captures Dubai by night in his shots, immortalising a growing city that floats in the dark like an abstract vision.
This series of photographs was taken between August and November of 2008, just before the financial collapse, and makes us aware of what was about to happen. Farina documents Dubai at the height of its age of financial optimism, but by night – empty, lying in wait for future glory which will, paradoxically, never come.
These photographs are all about the lights of construction sites and the urban landscape under construction, underlining the dreamy atmosphere of an evolving city, a city built in a void in praise of a future that is about to be accomplished. In these shots of Dubai, the wait is the emotional element that attracts the onlooker.
A suspended, almost metaphysical aspect of a city that seems to create itself. Massimiliano Farina’s aesthetic is incomplete, capable of focusing on human labour rather than on the splendour of the finished work. His poetics redeem the consolidated image of incomplete constructions, which are not unfinished works but works of architecture in progress, ready to welcome the world and longing to become a part of it.
In this photographer’s work Dubai becomes its own work of art, the image of a city that is growing and creating itself as it looks forward to a possible future. His shots are analogies, the result of interaction between thought and choice of composition. His photographs capture the expressive power built on reflection on the design and representation of the city.
 
Paolo Schianchi