cRistina Vatielli, Roman, forty years old, started from reportage and over time has built a visual narrative through staged photographic projects or self-portraits. The unedited images that we present in this portfolio they will be, together with her previous works, at the center of the episode that dedicates them Sky Arte in the docuseries The photographers, aired next October.
Today she reveals the genesis of this project to iO Donna.
How did this series that you called Terra Mater come about?
I felt the need to talk about looking for a child. For three years we had been trying to have one, me and my partner – Ippolito Simion, who is also the videomaker with whom I collaborate on this project -. I couldn’t become a mother or even talk about it. We took a trip to Sicily and there, alone and lying in the center of Ariadne’s Labyrinth – one of the land art works in the open-air museum of Fiumara d’Arte – the drone he was testing suddenly appeared above my head I visualized the image, I saw myself through Ippolito’s eyes and I understood that this was the path I wanted to take: to go with him into nature to create images that spoke of me, of us and of the search for fertility.
Cristina Vatielli: the places of our life
How did you choose the places to photograph?
They are all places linked to our lives: Trentino and Friuli are part of Ippolito’s legacy. I searched for the primordial element of fertility, the water that generates: rivers, streams, springs and waterfalls, all the way to the Galician sea. Here, where we have been going for many years, there is an ancient fertility ritual: at the Nine Waves beach the women gather and let themselves be bathed in the icy waters of the ocean dressed only in light white robes.
This work expresses his concern for the planet. Is photography a form of activism?
It absolutely is, otherwise I couldn’t dedicate my life to her. I started this project precisely to counter that sense of omnipotence that we humans have. Faced with the difficulty of being fertile, I realized our fragility: we destroy our ecosystem thinking we can do everything through science and technology. We can duplicate ourselves, create artificial intelligences, discover other galaxies but we are small in front of the planet and its beauty. My being an embryo inside nature means just this: we are creatures of this planet, if we don’t respect it how can we think of bringing children into the world?
Was it difficult being naked in front of the drone’s artificial eye?
I felt uncomfortable being naked in nature. We are not used to contact. We are always dressed, protected. Lying in the cold, among wild animals and the smell of the earth, I strongly felt the generative power of the universe.
Speaking of tricks, will technology save us or is it a new trap?
I have love and hate for technology. If on the one hand it allows me to do things that I could not have done, like these images from the drone, or it allows so many people to have children thanks to artificial insemination, on the other it scares me. I live my time and use its tools to give a precise message: we must return to nature, to love and respect it. © REPRODUCTION RESERVED
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