A Napoleonic soldier meets Death in the Russian winter, a young birdwatcher takes flight and a man vanishes in a vaguely ghostly town. In the three photographic micro-stories that make up Un Sedicesimo 34, The Napoleonic soldier and other stories, Paolo Ventura expresses his bewildering, melancholic and metaphysical poetics. His photographs, which hover somewhere between dreams and reality, are the result of meticulous staging in his studio, small sets in which the artist become scenographer (he designs the sets himself), costume designer, director and actor.