Sinking Stone shines a mirror on Venice: the theatre, history, tourism and excesses of a tragic city, beautiful but flawed and decaying. Drawing on traditions of baroque theatre, sculpture, architecture and painting, Cristiano's photographs shine a harsh light on the contrasting surfaces and residents of the city. Sinking Stone is a modern day Vanitas, showing both sides of Venice — a town immortalised through its history and tourism and a precarious, unstable island sinking into water. The constant invasion of tourists creates a sort of living theater. Volk's colour work relates to the Venetian pictorial technique of 'tonalismo', while the use of flash and of a limited colour palette creates a Gorgon-like face: a vulgar, almost overwhelming face which behind reveals little. After all, vanus — the Latin root word for the city — means empty. Best book 2019 American Suburb X.