Gianluca Santoni is a photographer from Italy. Poetry of Matter, by Italian photographer Gianluca Santoni, won 1st Place in Industrial Architecture at the 2026 International Photography Awards, and earned Santoni the title of Architecture Photographer of the Year. The series was made at the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, where Santoni sees architecture becoming “a poetry of concrete and steel, where form and function merge in balance.”
His images isolate the site’s pure geometries — headframes, conveyor bridges and brick façades — and let light turn them into changing scenographies. The structures evoke both memory and vision. Heir to the spirit of the Bauhaus, the complex speaks of labour, transformation and rebirth.
Read in Luminaries: Concrete, Steel and the Afterlife of Industry