(b. Italy)
Dario Zini, born and raised in Vicenza, Italy, has lived in France, England and the United States. In 1985, Dario studied English literature in London, England. In 1989, he enrolled at the IUAV in Venice Italy to study architecture and in 1991 he joined the architectural program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. At NJIT, he completed his Bachelor of Architecture (Magna cum Laude) in 1995 and a year later his Masters of Science. Dario then moved to Toronto where he has been employed in the architectural and IT fields.
Dario has been actively involved in photography since his teen years. While living in Italy during the 1980s, he began to develop an approach and range of subjects common to those of the documentary tradition. At the same time, he began exhibiting his work, focusing on documentary themes about his native land.
During the 1990s, Dario suspended his photographic activity to undertake architectural studies, an interest sparked mainly by his photographic research into the built environment. He resumed once settled in Toronto and has been photographing since.
Dario concentrates his photographic research on the human-made environment, particularly buildings and structures of modern city centers. Among his topics of exploration are the issues of pure documentation versus personal vision, the physical reality and sense of place, and the way the viewer perceives and makes sense of the modern urban environment. In this series, the city of Toronto becomes an archetype for the modern North American city and at the same time a unique place with all the richness and diversity of a complex organism in constant transition.
