During Bologna’s buzzing Cersaie 2025 (22-26 September), a quieter but no less powerful creative force unfolded in the heart of the city: Elementali, an immersive photographic exhibition by Italian photographer Paolo Zauli, internationally known for his rock-and-roll portraits of music legends. In this new body of work, Zauli swaps guitar riffs for whispers of wind and flame, channelling the same raw energy of a live gig into a series of images that feel both ancient and avant-garde.
I checked out the exhibition that seems to invite visitors into a world where the four classical elements – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – are alive with hidden intelligences. Each photograph becomes a threshold to the “elementals”, the mythical spirits said to inhabit and animate our natural world. In Zauli’s lens, a cascade turns into the flowing silhouette of a nymph, a tree trunk hides the shadow of a dryad, and a sudden lick of flame becomes a salamander mid-dance. These are not mere visual tricks; they are quiet revelations of something more profound than the eye can register.
Zauli himself describes the challenge of the project with poetic clarity:
“The true inspiration was the artistic challenge itself: how can one capture with a physical medium like photography something entirely ethereal? I tried not to portray ‘nature’ in the classical sense, but its spiritual essence.”
(“La vera ispirazione è stata la sfida artistica stessa: come si può catturare con un mezzo fisico come la fotografia qualcosa che è interamente etereo? Ho cercato di non ritrarre la ‘natura’ in senso classico, ma la sua essenza spirituale.”)
This tension – between the physical click of the shutter and the intangible presence of the elements – gives Elementali its electric charge.
Zauli uses double exposures, stroboscopic lighting and carefully styled subjects to suggest movement, breath and even sound. Some images shimmer like mirages; others feel carved from stone. Yet all share a haunting immediacy, as if the spirits might step out of the frame the moment you look away.
The show’s multi-sensory design deepens the immersion. Short video sequences and subtle soundscapes echo the rustle of leaves or the hiss of fire, while curated scents of wood smoke and wet earth pull visitors further into Zauli’s otherworld. It is less a photographic display than a ritual, a space where art and nature conspire to slow your heartbeat and sharpen your senses.
For those who know Zauli from his iconic stage portraits of rock stars (collected in the gorgeous volume a.live co-written with sing-songwriter Alessandra Gismondi of band Shad Shadows whom I interviewed for the summer magazine), Elementali reveals a different but equally rebellious spirit.
Where his music photography captures human charisma, here he seeks the charisma of the non-human – a reminder, in our hyper-digital age, that magic still resides in forests, rivers and gusts of wind.
Whether you approach it as fine art, mythology or a sensory adventure, Elementali is a rare gift: an exhibition that leaves you not only looking, but listening, breathing and wondering. If you find yourself in Bologna – or wherever this extraordinary series travels next – step inside and let the invisible become momentarily visible.
Due to its public success, the exhibition has been extended to 12 October 2025 and will be opened at Galleria Cavour only Saturdays and Sundays afternoon.
Elementali would be perfectly at home in London, a city renowned for its immersive photographic exhibitions, and I truly hope it travels here so I can experience it again in the Big Smoke.
