"If, as Diane Arbus said, a photograph is a mystery about a mystery, Paolo Ventura's haunting and beautiful work makes the mysteries seem to multiply exponentially, like reflections captured in the infinite progression of a hall of mirrors. Looking at these photos creates a moment of suspension, a melancholy hush in which we almost imagine we can hear whispers about the riddles of life and death, time and age, childhood innocence and adult knowledge, art, war, history, and such questions as: What are we seeing? What do we think we are seeing? And what we are concluding about what we think we are seeing?" Francine Prose, Aperture -