“The woman of the millennium is discovering herself freely as never before, she can liberate her body from stereotypes and the cage of sexualization and objectification, simply owning what she is, in all her strength and fragilities, in all her feminine energy and her connection with mother Earth.”
It all started when…
SOULDEGA: Who are you? Where are you from? And who or what influenced you to become a film photographer?
MARIA: I’m a human. I come from the Earth but my mother gave me birth in Italy. I have to admit that what influenced me the most was the destiny, and still is, in one word the Life influence my photography. The first camera arrived with the destiny 8 years ago and since then all the others cameras. My digital camera died at the first shooting I was doing in New York, the first of the serie “In Her Rooms”, so I decided to only shoot on film since then. Film photography is the most authentic reflection of how I see the world.
SOULDEGA: We love the authenticity you capture of women in their most intimate and vulnerable state with your “In Her Room” series. Can you share the central message and feeling you strive to convey with these works?
MARIA: The woman of the millennium is discovering herself freely as never before, she can liberate her body from stereotypes and the cage of the sexualization and objectification, simply owning what she is, in all her strength and fragilities, in all her feminine energy and her connection with mother Earth. Once a woman can do this and embrace the journey of self love, sisterhood is possible and through this our collective writing of a new chapter in the history.
SOULDEGA: Your works have been featured with Fubiz, Dazed, I-D Italy, Vogue Italia and most recently @Paulette. How has it been for you to experience being published on these platforms for a wide audience to view?
MARIA: While I was starting shooting In Her Rooms I never really though about the future of this project or at the audience that could be rich. During the process I received so many messages of women that were writing me about how my photographs have helped them in the appreciation of their bodies and how they started looking at nudity with completely other eyes. My subjects really often told me how it was liberating for them posing for me and how precious to have a portrait in their rooms. So at some point I had to face that what I was doing it was more than just my project, it is a raw and true witness of the womanhood of this time and of course it couldn’t stay only in my archive but needed to be out in the world.
I was really happy also for my subjects, my sisters in their rooms, with their bodies trough my photographs screaming how beautiful it is to just be and tell stories without even speaking, just with their gazes and their intimate spaces, stories in which lot of us can recognized themselves rather than in the in the commercial images or in prepared impersonal sets.
SOULDEGA: What camera(s) and/or film do you love shooting with the most?
MARIA: I have basically two Contax cameras, the T2 is my companion.
SOULDEGA: Your self portraits in film and shots of your home are so raw, personable and inviting. Your living installation of shattered plates caught our eye especially. How has this artistic venture helped you to keep creative during this Quarantine time?
MARIA: I have billions of shots in my home. My home has always inspired me a lot. I’m really lucky because the light during the day is always interesting and I’m almost never bored of what I see in my space. The fact that my home seems a painting most of the time, has helped me a lot during the quarantine, but it wasn’t really enough. I had to humanize things around me as my flowers or my plates. I shuttered my plates on the floor first of all to just liberate the rage I was feeling in myself, then I realized they were a beautiful reflection of the situation we were all experienced. I lived with this installation in my kitchen for one week, I added flowers on it to symbolize a rebirth and I watered it, as I was watering my creativity and hope. Now the shuttered plates and the dry flowers are safe in a box, maybe one day I will exhibit them.
SOULDEGA: Lastly, if you could photograph any influential woman artist (living or deceased) for your “In her Room” series, who would it be and why?
MARIA: The fact that I enjoy the most when I’m shooting is that I’m meeting a new person and that we share something so deep that they leave in me always a revelation, a disclosure, a part of their light in my soul. So thinking this I would definitely in my dream shooting Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, Frida Khalo, Virginia Woolf and the living myths Patty Smith and Yayoi Kousama.
