High Seas, High Hopes

    PH Musuem Days
    12—15.09.2024

    MIA Photo Fair 
    21—24.03.2025

    Portofino Residency 2024

    Since 2021, Portofino Dry Gin and PhMuseum have been inviting visual artists to offer their interpretation of the Italian Riviera.


    PhMuseum Days International
    Photography Festival
    12—15.09.2024
    Bologna, Italy


    MIA Photo Fair
    21—24.03.2025
    Milan, Italy



    Dear Portofino, 

    You were everything I expected and more. I arrived after a long journey, anxiously waiting for the sunrise. I grew up hearing about you. A symbol of glamour and mesmerising beauty famously captured by Slim Aarons. 

    You are the amusing juxtaposition of the ultra yachts and the ferries. And so I captured a bit of local life while trying to get a peek into your other reality behind those closed doors. The tourists vs the locals. Those who have access to the tiny bays of rocks vs those who shield themselves to avoid sunburns. Just next to them, others lounged in spaces flooded with brands. 

    You are an explosion of greenery, beaches, wealth, summer and Italian vernacular culture. 

    Like others, I wished I was on a boat. 

    I never went on a boat but I was with you, in Portofino. 

    Xx Carolina



    Carolina Pimenta's High Seas, High Hopes aims to deconstruct Portofino's idealized image navigating the complex interplay of luxury and authenticity, tourism and local life, and offering a nuanced reflection on the contemporary Mediterranean myth.

    A collaboration between PhMuseum and Portofino Dry Gin, each year the Portofino Residency brings a visual artist to Portofino, inviting them to explore and interpret the Italian Riviera after their own research.

    In 2024, the project evolved into an international open call. Photographer Carolina Pimenta, a Portuguese artist active between Mexico City and Lisbon, was selected to narrate the complexity of Portofino through High Seas, High Hopes. The project explored the contrasts between luxury and authenticity, tourism and local life, deconstructing the iconic image of the village and offering a reflection on the myth of the contemporary Mediterranean. Pimenta’s images trace a relentless movement, a rush to seek, know, understand, and shape an idea and then its opposite. An instinctive mosaic takes shape, unafraid of contradiction: her Portofino is a reality of sharp contrasts, where ultra-glamour and more accessible, human, imperfect gestures clash and mirror each other. Local life and tourism, yachts and ferries, the shade of private beaches and sunburns, freshly caught fish and the glare of shop windows. As we jump from one detail to another, like Pimenta, we try not to fixate on a single idea but to let several coexist.

    The images allow the eye to wander and invite us to reflect on how we construct and deconstruct the idea of a place.

    - Giuseppe Oliverio







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