Nooemi Comi is a finalist to the Sony World Photography Awards, one of the busiest competitions in the world. It is one of the most important international photographic competitions. $25,000 up for grabs to show how and where the world is going through the photographs of professionals, beginners and students. The Sony World Photography Awardfor all simply the Sony, tomorrow April 13th will crown i new winners of 2023 but, for days now, we have known the finalists that we are presenting in one long sequence in the link to the gallery that you see on this page.
As always many Italians in the race, famous and unknown who make it to the end of the competition and often win. We are good, no doubt. In this edition there are samples such as Fabio Bucciarelliphotojournalist witness of many conflictsfrom the Arab Spring onwards, with an image from South Sudan, afflicted by four years of floods and for more than ten by a very violent political instability which is in fact a war. Edward Delille And Giulia Piermartirithe couple from Florence who for years have been documenting the great issue of climate change – in this case we are in Mozambique at the mercy of drought, floods and storms – with a photograph constructed or staged if we want to put it better.
Using a special slide projector, the authors project onto the ground the image of the possible transformation of the landscape which is superimposed on the real scene in front of them. The result is a series of complex and dreamlike photographs – superimpositions of images – metaphorical projection of a not too distant future. Also among the Italians in the final Bruno ZanzotteraAndrea Fantini e Naomi Comi. I asked the latter a few questions, first of all to find out who she was and what she expects from this competition.
Noemi Comi and the importance of prizes
Let’s start with this competition, why did you participate?
Competitions are an opportunity: the more I participate, the more I understand where I can find the best habitat for my work and the most stimulating comparisons. Even this very final of the Sony was completely unexpected and exciting. The Sony is an important competition, it offers visibility and economic support in cash or photographic equipment and exhibits it at Somerset House of London with the catalog spread all over the world seemed like a good opportunity. Today they are a point of reference for the visibility of a project and in fact, together with the curators, the only ways to convey it.
Noemi Comi in a portrait by Alessia Preite
You don’t do reportage, you develop very particular photographic works, anthropological tales created with accurate artistic techniques, don’t you run the risk of ending up in a cauldron that only in the professional section this year welcomed 415,000 images from more than 200 countries and 180,000 participants?
I have a desire to reach a broad audience. Perhaps this is also why I express myself with a pop aesthetic, in some respects pleasant and colorful even if I often deal with difficult topics. This competition includes the “creative” category and it seemed to me that my work could fit in there since I am reached the final.
How did you discover your interest in photography?
During my adolescence I was rather shy and introverted, my parents gave me a reflex camera. Photography immediately became a therapeutic tool, at first with self-portraits and then slowly I turned my gaze to what was around me. He taught me to observe and frame reality. I took very bad photographs, I was only looking for likes on instagram. I lived in Catanzaro, I was studying at the scientific high school and here there was an unexpected fundamental meeting. Our school had incredibly invited Ferdinando Scianna, the great master of Italian photography, to hold a seminar. With him I understood that photography could and should be something else.
Noemi Comi, Lupus Hominarius
And then, what happened?
After high school I went to study in Florence at the Labathe Free Academy of Fine Arts for the three-year period and then I arrived in Milan where I am now graduating from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
Stories that seem like fairy tales and maybe they are
Your works draw on ethno-anthropological culture, where does this deep interest come from?
I am interested in everything that goes beyond the visible. Metempsychosis Plastic, is a hybrid series that combines digital and film photography, born from the discovery of an image album refers to reincarnation that describes the process of transferring a soul into another body: the photographic soul of the past merges with that of the present to create completely new “forms of life”. In Sunrise LuxI combine documentation and conceptual photography to analyze near-death experiences while in Homo Saurus, I imagine and stage the alien invasion of a population of reptilians from the planet Nibiru who subjugate humans by making them slaves and, through genetic modifications, couplings and mutations, dominate the planet Earth.
Lupus Hominarius, the work with which I am a finalist at Sony, was born from the discovery of an old English tourist guide from 1883. This volume told the story of the werewolf of Nicastro, a town in the province of Catanzaro. She, the werewolf, is a baroness who is burned alive because she is discovered in her bestial nature. I began to investigate and, little by little, the memories of my grandfather’s stories also resurfaced, legends of werewolves that terrorized us children. I drew on the oral histories of folk tales from Calabria where one could become werewolves following curses, infections, bites or pacts with the devil and where each village had its own wolf, with peculiarities that made it unique. To the legend, shared by many towns in my region, we must add a variant linked to the wedding night in which the bride dies at the hands of her werewolf husband just as they are consummating the marriage. Very often, these stories were created and spread precisely to prevent women from going out alone, especially at night. I believe, or hope, that this work is an attempt to give a contemporary reading to a fantastic figure of my culture.
We photographers are like archaeologists, digging into cultural myths, we tell the story of the territory.
Noemi Comi, Lupus Hominarius
Photography is a language that has often lent itself to anthropological narration, who inspired you?
My reference author is Mattia Balsamini but from the point of view of anthropological research, I was inspired by the work of Alessia Rollo.
Ancient myths for contemporary readings
There are many authors who have dedicated themselves to the anthropological narrative such as Moira Ricci or literature, I think of Silvia Camporesi And Valentina Vannicola, just to stay in the Italian context. Is there a specific female in this narrative genre?
I think so. I think we have a greater sensitivity when it comes to memory.
Your projects seem linked by an invisible thread, how are they born?
Basically I’m interested in the unknown, what we don’t know. I like to unearth secret or forgotten stories. I have just completed a work that will be exhibited at Craff of Spilinbergo. It is a sort of fake investigation: it is the rediscovery of a medical office that investigated the harmful effects of proxidium. I start from the consequences of using this substance, to arrive at sketching a medical researcher with an ambiguous and narcissistic personality with a taste for spectacularization – in the work we will also see a leg cut off – but I don’t want to add anything else.
Now I’m starting a new research that I still don’t know where it will take me: once again it has to do with the popular Calabrian tradition, this time I will deal with sweets and biscuits (but they are also ex votos).
Compared to my way of working, sometimes I think that the search for the final result is more important. The core of my work is digging and finding fragments of stories to reassemble. At the same time I rely a lot on aesthetics, maybe I’m too coherent. My works are somewhat similar to each other. What I understood is that for me anthropological study is important, the analysis of our society observed with an ironic lens. I write on the images, I make overlays. In the case of the work on near-death experiences, I had the protagonists write directly on the surface of the photographs, it seemed to me the most effective and credible way to involve the viewer.
Noemi Comi, Lupus Hominarius
Tell me the truth, do you believe the stories you stage?
I like the ambiguity of reality. I believe that conspiracy theories are the result of attempts to explain the complexities of the world and also its mysteries. Explaining who we are and where we are, isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do since humanity was born? In the past we relied on myths to do this.
I’m thinking of making a sort of small encyclopedia. I wouldn’t mind doing it by enumerating the various conspiracy theories as they often have a very interesting vision. It’s not easy because conspiracy theorists, by their very nature, are rather distrustful.
Next stage of your work?
I am preparing to participate in the Open Call of Deloitte Award. It’s €20,000 for projects by authors under 35. Another great opportunity.
From one award to another to make their work known and have opportunities for discussion, it is the current scenario shared by many authors of contemporary photography. Good luck, Noemi.
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