Changing Status, suspended landscapes

In ancient times the gate to a city was a physical threshold that used to mark the entryway to the urban environment. While photographing the gates in the city of Padua in 2005, I wondered what in our contemporary cities would play the role of a gate. The concept of a gate as a physical element has vanished; the threshold marking a passage, the entryway into the city is no longer an architectural element separating portions of space. Our perception of entering the city limits, while reaching the end of an itinerary that leads into the city itself, is originated by us “changing status”, while driving on a viaduct or along a ring road: we may have been within a urban landscape for a few kilometers, yet we realize we are entering a city only after crossing a viaduct or driving through a tunnel. My photography research work still in progress aims at documenting and cataloguing the landmarks of modern urban architecture that have replaced a physical threshold with a state of mind, the “changing of status”, the entryway into the city marked by a sensation.