La miglior veduta

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A photographic project that brings two visual narratives into dialogue, exploring Sri Lanka’s past and present, from the colonial era to the age of overtourism. Two intersecting gazes. A hundred years of history in between, and a question that is as much aesthetic as it is cultural and sociological: what makes the best view?

From independence in 1948 to the tourism boom that followed the civil war, Sri Lanka has undergone profound transformations. Accelerated growth has reshaped the landscape and altered the very perception of places, bringing environmental vulnerabilities, social tensions and dynamics associated with overtourism to the fore. In this context, photography plays a central role: once a tool of seduction and discovery, it has now also become a means of analysis, documentation and resistance.

Following his first trip to Sri Lanka in 2019, Diego Mayon accidentally came across a colonial-era book, The Hundred Best Views of Ceylon, featuring early twentieth-century black-and-white photographs intended to promote the beauty of the country to the first Western travellers.

Mayon returned to Sri Lanka twice more in 2025, with the explicit aim of comparing his own best views with those captured by the anonymous photographers of the album. The encounter between the historical images and Mayon’s photographs creates a visual short circuit that explores the local process of decolonisation through the expansion of tourism, examining how it reshapes economies, geographies, imaginaries and ways of inhabiting places.

The research behind La Miglior Veduta was supported by Strategia Fotografia 2024, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.