project info
Mother & Land is a photographic journey through the Great Mother, as Nature and as feminine. It is a project that includes seven works (The beginning, FireBergs'08 Hot|as|Ice, MoonShining, The other face of the Skin, Shinebergs'10 Touchable|as|Untouchable, Woodbergs'12 Beginning|as|End, Lapides). In some of them the images, printed in negative, symbolize, with photographic language, the slow and destructive human work on the environment. A surreal vision that conveys the feeling of a dystopian future, a metaphor for our violated environment.
If on the one hand we glimpse the point of no return in the images, on the other we understand the need for change through our daily actions and using technological progress without succumbing to it.
The Beginning is the first work on the environment. Images taken in negative with the mobile phone that start the creative process.
FireBergs'08 Hot|as|Ice, is the obsession of the Perito Moreno glacier which, in negative, becomes fire. The ice burns and the cracks become lava.
MoonShining represents the birth of the universe, the air, the atmosphere that surrounds us and enables us to live.
The other face of the Skin, a work on the symbols that are outlined on the rocky walls (Nature’s skin), is about our chance to choose the direction to go, between positive and negative.
ShineBergs'10 Touchable|as|Untouchable, is the water element that, although represented in negative, makes the clayey soil blue like the sky.
Woodbergs'12 beginning|as|End, the wood element, is a hymn to flora. The negative conversion reminds us how deforestation is depriving us of the air necessary for our survival.
Finally, Lapides, a work on violence against women where the main subject is a fuchsia dress photographed in desolate places. The dress, which represents beauty on the one hand, an absent body and absence of life on the other, is a denied right and at the same time the answer to all human and social rights.
Lapides emphasizes the similarity between woman and Mother Earth.
As a matter of fact, Mother&Land, in supporting environmental projects, is represented by a green dress, which is nothing but the negative of the fuchsia dress used in Lapides and which evokes the green of leaves, as if it were the dress of the Earth.
Each project has a life of its own, but together they represent a unique journey through Mother Earth. From a photographic point of view, the love for nature has certainly been influenced by the poetic vision of Ansel Adams, although it has been interpreted with a different language, both for the use of color and for that of negative while the concept is the result of political and life experiences.. If Man Ray's experimentation led to a process of inversion from positive to negative, Magritte's experience contributed to relating concepts to images, hence the dystopian and surreal vision.
Political experience is also a constant element of the work: environmental rights, together with women’s rights, are pressing to irrupt forcefully into political programs, into common thoughts and attitudes, raising, through beauty and wonder, questions about our future and that of our children.
When we talk about our planet or, more generally, about the Universe, we talk about ourselves and about a Beauty that we have the obligation to preserve. The use of the negative point of view is instrumental to raise the level of awareness about the consequences of our actions and get through to the viewer by means of surreal images.
It is necessary to observe Nature, to immerse oneself in it, because Nature is Mother, feminine and creative principle. Only in this way can we try to make our world a possible better one.
awards
Mother&Land's iconic photo has won 2nd place in the Photography category at Dubai Art Expo 2021.
