(30 May 2016) A passion for the shipwrecks led him to reinvent himself after 40 years in a diplomatic career, as a photographer, sculptor and model shipbuilding. From Ambassador to artist, on a journey to discover what he calls the”abandonment places.” The works of Stefano Benazzo are now calling in Finland, with the exhibition “Of the Sea and Destinies – In the Wake of the Wind”, inaugurated in recent days and open to the public until August 28 at the Forum Marinum Turku. The exhibition –proposed by the Italian Cultural Institute in Helsinki and sponsored by the Italian Navy, the Italian Embassy to Finland and the Finnish Embassy to Italy – is dedicated to the training ship of the Italian Navy, Amerigo Vespucci. It collects a series of images of beached shipwrecks and smaller boats taken by the artist himself. The location gives the event a very special value: it will be held on board the three-masted Suomen Joutsen, built in 1902, serving long as a Finnish Ship school before being entrusted to the Museum Forum Marinum, which is now moored permanently. There is also a model of the Vespucci ship, exhibited on a scal of 1: 100 built by Benazzo in 1999, and a series of photographs aboard the ship.
