Photos by @richardbarnes | Continuing to pursue the topic of an assignment originally done for National Geographic magazine, I have been photographing the marble quarries and workshop studios of individual artists and sculptors in northern Tuscany and in the South Tyrol near Bolzano, Italy. 

In addition to capturing the quarries themselves using both drone and conventional photography, the imagery depicts a landscape where extraction of the precious stone has been going on for more than 2,000 years. My work looks at the macro—the mountains and quarries, as well as the impact of mining marble over the centuries—and the micro—the use of marble in the creation of sculpture through both traditional hand-carving methods and evolving techniques such as robotic technology. The images depicted here represent a snapshot from my past two trips in 2025 at Carrara and the quarries of northern Italy.

https://blossom.primal.net/5a9ff78becefd1bdccce2bf77c69fad8b8f13d98286a912a01272553f67e9175.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/c63fd9e3fa486106c0b596e456f8a88c21f0d26499678a9259bbfdaeaa22459e.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/da464eea09c9117e7628bb347d3be84a89eda1d9ac6f7271d7ff1dacdc84dd6c.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/c31d6771992415e65f28a44b1d9977a6ebad22019da2b3c365296be728aa2bf2.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/d53d49107a3e9ef0ba26347187955be41caa11413aaed8c0c63e7e853635af60.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/1acccfd9abe38f7efaef112e99d21494ba786a9a8213088b1ee83614e602804e.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/ceaab13f6b70a4a28da7dbafe3338baac71af4cfe20440fe151791e66b4204dd.jpg