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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

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

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…

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.

With the essay, I experienced a number of conflicting emotions while watching this essay. I moved from a sense of disorder to feelings of joy followed by upheaval. I particularly liked numbers 1@11 as they seemed universal in their appeal. I found that quite a few of shots such as these, were reminiscent of horror film stills, such as the Ring. Technically, all of these photographs were fantastic and I liked the vignetting in a number of the shots. This essay had the mark of authorship as each shot seemed technically similar to the others. I liked this aspect a lot.

I felt that the essay would have flowed better, if the photos of fish (2&5) were together, as breaking them up seemed to destroy the momentum of the essay as a whole. However, one could argue that dreams or memories don’t have any consistant rationale to their sudden appearance. The giraffe and elephant photographs were Cool, with a capital C. The way they were photographed, it was almost as if they were stuffed animals on the bookcase of a child. I liked this.

The photographer seemed to ascribe/disguise personal hidden meanings to a number of the photos. Photographs 6&14 used letters and numbers to encrypt a message, and was if the photographer was challenging the viewer to decode this very personal world. However, these photographs seemed too personal and instead of allowing me to become part of Simona’s world, I felt a sense of indifference. I felt like being left out of my best friends 21st birhtday party. Perhaps instead they were clues to Simona’s dream world and the viewer is free to draw their own indefinite conclusions.

Others have asked whether the grant should be given to a personal fine arts project as opposed to a typical photo journalists project. This is a good question, but I don’t think this demarcation is so important. What is of significance is how much the photographer involves the viewer or audience in their published essays. I think that this is an important distinction, because I have also viewed photo-journalists work that is not so universal in its appeal, and in the long run it can also leaves the viewer just as cold as a overly introverted fine arts project. So, what is important is projecting an essay that has more of a universal message/s for viewers to decode. I hope this makes sense.

Thankyou,
Johan

Whoa, Babe!

I agree with Hernan Zenteno (above):
“I can’t found (sic) a purpose, a direction in this work, a relationship between the presentation and the fine art pictures. But in the aesthetic the pictures have an inherent cohesion.”

Patricia

Well done on being selected as an EPF finalist. Good luck.

About Paul O’Mara comment:
“I’m going out on a limb here, but things are different in Italy. And just to be fair, the same can be said for any country. Simona’s work reflects a cultural context.”

I share the same cultural context of Simona, at least from a countrywide perspective, but I can only find a thin “Italian” connotation in her work (and related to daily things, for example the floor in number 6 and the game “gioco della settimana” in number 14, but maybe such game is played by children in every country… ;). Instead, the first visual reference that came to my mind was Hyeronymous Bosch (for example “The Garden of Earthly Delights”), due to the enigmatic mix of human and animal elements.

Speaking as a fine artist-turned-photographer, I value how Simona has used her artist’s eye to construct scenes that reflect those inarticulate places within ourselves that long for expression but all too often come up looking contrived or artificial when we try to make them manifest. Simona’s photographs are technically brilliant, yes, but these technical elements never get in the way of what she is trying to say. The message is paramount here and it evokes rather than tells the viewer what is going on. For each viewer will see something unique to their own life experience, that is if they can open up to the subjective.

Brava, Simona!

Patricia

Although I can see the quality of this work technically, as a whole or as a project/essay – call it what you like, I can’t see why is it so extraordinarily different then lots of other works. In resume what makes it stand out.

Bob Black makes a couple of references on his post, that curiously came in to my mind when I saw this work: Roberto Bolano’s 2666 and Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s photographs. While as in Bolano’s novel, this work makes use or takes us to a “alternative reality” where the plot unfolds; when we put it side by side with Meatyard’s work it kind of comes short on the expectations that it creates in that task of taking us to the personal universe of the photographer… at least for me!

This are my 5 cents, obviously, and to finish as I start “Tastes are not to be discussed, are to be criticized”.

Congratulations and best wishes to Simona and all the other ten finalists.

Cheers to you all,

Armando

- Charles Baudelaire