Indelebile Italia by Giselle Valdes

This fall, The West End Museum will host a new photography exhibit in its Members’ Gallery that celebrates the beauty and mystery of Italy. Indelebile Italia is part of the Museum’s annual commemoration of Italian Heritage Month in October.

Indelebile Italia photographer and curator Giselle Valdes has been exhibiting her work since 1982. Her images for this show feature the cityscapes, churches and historic buildings, Renaissance sculpture and ancient ruins of Rome, Florence and Venice.

“Italy is easy to fall in love with at first sight,” says Valdes. “ I was inspired by the mythologies of ancient Rome, the precise beauty of Florence’s Renaissance and the golden grace of Venice’s canals as I captured the enhanced color and glow the world possesses when one is in love. My photographic process adds color, delineates an edge, and creates a fresh impression of this timeless beauty.”

Photographs will be available for purchase, with a portion of the proceeds going to fund future exhibitions at the West End Museum. The exhibit is sponsored by Gallery East.

Valdes lives in Fanwood, New Jersey and attended Boston University. She had her first photography exhibit in Boston in 1982 and moved to Jamaica in 1985, where she showed and sold her print work exclusively at Patoo Gallery in Kingston. Valdes has worked as a craftsman and metalsmith and upon her return to the States in 1990, she continued to create a large and diverse body of work while traveling through her job at Continental Airlines. This is the second photography exhibit she has curated at the West End Museum, the first of her own work.