Established in Florence in 1897, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz has been an institute of the Max Planck Society since 2002. In the run-up to the opening of a new building located in Via Gustavo Modena 13, the Photothek launched an online exhibition starting on October 14, 2024, with photographs by Martino Marangoni, Bärbel Reinhard, Daniela Tartaglia, and Giuseppe Toscano.

Construction sites are places of continuous change. The morphology of a site changes over days, weeks, and months. In numerous phases, layers are uncovered or covered over, walls are erected or torn down, floors are laid, pipes are installed and walls are plastered. A spatial order is created to incorporate the structures of the institute. However, a construction site also resembles a stage on which different players act and communicate with each other in a precisely defined chronological sequence following precise stage directions.

In their project ‘Cantiere Kunst’ (the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz is often simply called “Il Kunst” by the local Florentine community), the four photographers entered into a relationship with the building on Via Gustavo Modena and the constantly changing and thus transitory conditions of the construction site. During the individual construction and relocation phases, they used their cameras to repeatedly scan the body of the building, explore spaces, trace surfaces, forms and textures, but also sounds, and engage with changing atmospheric conditions and different protagonists and narratives.