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Simona Ghizzoni – Aftermath
Emerging Photographer Fund – FINALIST (number three of eleven)
” These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back.”
Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things
2006-2009
Since early 2006, concurrent with my first reportage assignments, I have worked on a personal research project exploring the decay of memories. The following photographs are an abstract from the series titled “Aftermath”.
While originally meaning the welcome first new growth of grass after the cutting of hay, “aftermath” has now commonly come to mean the period following a major event or consequences of that event.
This work explores the aftermath of innocence lost. Growing up means you have to abandon the fantastic world of your childhood where everything is wrapped in a magic halo. When you are a child, the world is alive and humanized – animals, plants, and objects. My photographs are a glance at my childhood fantasies transformed in the aftermath to frozen and eerie visions.
All of these photographs are printed in black and white on cotton rag paper and hand-colored with Ecoline (liquid watercolors).
Bio:
Simona Ghizzoni was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy, in 1977. After studying the classics, she attended the Istituto Superiore di Arti Visive e Fotografia in Padua, where she graduated in 2002. She went on to gain an MA in the history of photography from the University of Bologna in 2007, with a thesis on the history of psychiatric photography.
Since 2005 Ghizzoni has committed herself to reportage and personal research projects, especially concerning the condition of women. In 2006 she was selected for the Reflexions Masterclass, held by photographer Giorgia Fiorio and the curator Gabriel Bauret. In the same year she tied for first prize at the FNAC photo contest, with the work ‘Scars’, an essay on Sarajevo ten years after the end of the war. She took a third place prize from World Press Photo in 2008, a second place magazine feature picture story award at POYi in 2009, and was recently selected as one of 12 photographers to participate in the 16th Annual World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass this fall.
Ghizzoni is based in Rome and represented by Contrasto.
Website: Simona Ghizzoni does not have a personal website, but she is featured at www.contrasto.it
EDITOR’S NOTE: ONE COMMENT PER PERSON PLEASE UNDER THIS ESSAY….further discussions may take place under Dialogue…many thanks for giving this a try… david alan harvey
I’ve been a keen reader of Burn, I will try to define what it is to me before talking about the work. Its my first post..
Burn is about promoting good photography and I guess the award is about elevating certain approaches and practices and abilities as more worthy than others. It remains unclear though what the criteria is for the award and I think it is necessary whereas for the blog itself not so.
The great thing about the award is it place within this blog which really is a great ground upon which people who care about photography can voice and express their opinions. That is the great strength of BURN. Ideally BURN (its readers and contributors) would be the judges and award givers for this competition. But this is not a democracy but a republic (and I believe rightly so) and therefore there should be some line some statement of what the republic defends.
The work itself does not work for me. It reminds me about a lot of work I see on the large democratic photo. website. Pleasing to the eye but not challenging the way we perceive (eye candy, not visual vitamins). Bodies of visual work that claim memory and loss as their subject often fall prey to cliche and repetition like a body of work on humanity and suffering would.
Art or journalism.
I don’t understand the conflict within so many photographers over this debate, many people seem to give an opinion in one category or the other then excuse themselves by stating that it may belong to the other category (implying to which their opinions hold no authority) and in doing so they are slighting one over the other. I have an architecture/art background but I’m a photographer. The goals of art are to shed light onto the reality of the what we are, to better communicate that which by conventional forms of communication fail and undermine a subject. It has always struck me that this is the goal of this blog and is what forward thinking journalism is about. When the conversation turns to is this art or journalism for me the discussion is over.
Although this work is impressive in many ways I think it works to further separate the two classifications in a place and situation that should be about bringing them together.
I would not speak to much about Simona work (too many musical notes miss to me) nor through Bob Black reaction, I know it’s only one comment per personn so it’s perhaps not the place to discuss together but Bob’s very clear way of writing make me react, like Simona form it can mesmerize us and hide the essential.
Comparaison with Mario Giacomelli is a real humorous sacrilege. They diverge from all parts. I will not re-write Giacomelli C-V but those who know him well knows that first he never study photography, he never speak about himself, never speak about photography, his permanent references to painting also (even we can disagree) was the first Italian reacting agaisnt the Cliché of the italian’ sensuality and beauty. His works like “Hospice” was the exact opposite of such way to work, straight, hard, kicking out all beauty to disturb us as it has traumatize the photographer, the way to use large format, the way to colorize (only) would have been a sacrilege for Mario, the childhood of Mario influenced him only technicly speaking as he came from an extrem poor familly, even his beautifull landscape was only done because the lines of the land was the ripples of the farmers. Speaking of himself would have been an abomination for Giacomelli. Mario Giacomelli experiment, push the limit, made things people never saw before, he created things and never applied some specific recipes but invent them. He took risk etc etc..
I wouldn’t also say that mario never win a contests or any grants…but only a symbolic prize from the german photo society in 1995….
This comparaison is like saying that all frenchys who shot decisiv moment do like HCB, all americans shooting supermarket parking do like Shore or Eggleston, like all german shooting factories do like Hans & Hila etc etc… It is really reducing our access to the world. It is saying we know before it really start. Photography is stronger than this…
Buongiorno!
this is the first time I leave a comment here, even though I have been constantly checcked .BURN since it was launched.
Thank you David for creating this, it means so much to me. It’s the first blog ever actively partecipated to and a constant font of inspirations and motivations!
Michael, you work deserve the best. The pictures are deep, visually stunning. They even manage to be vibrant in the loneliness feeling they provoke.
Absolutely marvellous, congratulations!
cheers, everybody!
francesco
This is mostly in reply to David Ellicson’s comment – Davin, come on! Give the awards the boot. They mean nothing other than an majority of individual’s votes at a particular moment in time. and just because photographers win contests or get into a class doesn’t make your opinion about their work less meaningful. You don’t have to like everything everyone else likes. I felt so timid when I first started in photography because I didn’t particularly like HCBresson. But he was, according to my teacher, a God. I can understand why he is one of THE most important fathers of photography but personally he isn’t my favorite. So what, I’m not an opinion clone of everyone else. I appreciate an honest, original critique of work than an agreement with the bandwagon. And this carries over into your photography, so be careful. Work that people call “successful”, and that you don’t agree with, might make you think that you’re not doing something right, or maybe you should try something more that style. Forget that! Believe in yourself a little more.
Simona – Brava! I think the work is beautiful. Although I get lost in it a little bit, it gives me just enough clues in each frame, and teaches me about you. It also connects me to my own visions from childhood – and work that can do something different for each viewer is really special. I don’t know if I would call it an “essay”. The photographs don’t tell a narrative in any traditional sense. But hell, what is tradition anyway? This is yours, certainly. Good Luck in the future!
LB
Many of these photos are reminiscent of Francesca Woodman. Too reminiscent. From the limb disappearing into the wall-closet, to the dress, to the lusciously textured decaying walls and the stuffed animals of the curiosity cabinet. These pictures are lovely, but in my mind too much like Woodman’s in both style and content to be called original work.