Mediterranea is a series of digital and analog photographs which describes the timeless beauty of Sicily. It is a reflection of Giulia De Marchi’s soul, a young photographer from Treviso, bewitched by this so subtle and intense language that she feels as an essential aspect of her life. The collection is an ‘ongoing project’, born from a fast and natural, spontaneous and instinctual photography, linked to the artist’s travels and not so premeditated. My eye, she explains, “tells a story, without restrictions, but capturing gestures, geometries and movements close to me”. In particular, in the case of Sicily, for many summers she lived this land with curiosity, leaving it with great melancholy. Come il mare instead, is a fragment of ‘Italian summer’, if so can be called the marine scenery of Salento. In both cases, the final form of the story, with which the albums are presented, results from a subsequent meticulous work of selection and small-format printing on which Giulia scrupulously works alone.
From the shots of the two collections emerges a supertemporal vision, a naturalness and a balance of shapes, colors and tints, that seems to share unknowingly her works, as if her eye followed an aesthetic that exceeds time. The subjects portrayed passing through, caught by surprise, the way in which the light crosses the frame, all these elements imprint at each shot the ineffable beauty of what Giulia has seen. During our talk, the artist remembers some words she associates to the perception of her images; it is something about “deferred spaces, romantic aspects of harmonious musicality and the continuous pursuit of perfection”. Walk and observe everything to catch the surprise effect around the corner. Pay attention to meetings and stories that photography can freeze in a moment and, at the same time, get breathe. These are the directions she follows.
Travel reports from Sicily and Salento do not miss, in the fast and authentic street photography, the historical and traditional details of the places visited, or the people who live there with their daily habits. In Mediterranea old men walk to the ruins of a temple, an iron statue with angel’s wings lying on the ground as a resting place, a lady sits soaking in the natural pools looking at the sea and some children climb the Scala dei Turchi; flicking through the pages of Come il mare, the arc of Santa Maria al Bagno frames the bathers, an elderly woman waits for the low tide to enter the water jumping on the pebbles. Giulia seeks beauty in small gestures. Let the observer wander with his imagination, triggering his fantasy on anecdotes and stories, features and expressions of the protagonists thinking about how they continued their way after their fleeting and unsuspecting encounter with the camera.
Since childhood, more easily behind the lens than in front of, Giulia tells of having bought with the first salary an entry model Level Canon, fully exploited after some basic notion exchanged with a friend and a short course of photography. He studied economics in his city without but it never hindered her path and self-taught interest in photography. “Over time I collected books and manuals, attended exhibitions and browsed catalogues, understanding how– specifies the artist – immortalizing what surrounds me has become almost a kind of natural dependence”. She does not define herself addicted to photography but fullfilled by this passion that maximizes her emotions, “a kind of outlet valve that helps me get out of everyday life and what normally surrounds me”. Among the influences and inspirations that prompt her from the outside, in addition to photography ça va sans dire, music and cinema, “looking in the author’s message for something that can enrich me without distorting my natural vision of the world”.
Written by Costanza Francesconi
Images © Giulia De Marchi
