Martina della Valle

CORRESPONDENCE

CORRESPONDENCE

Correspondence is the result of an exchange of words and images held with a group of migrant women via chat for a few months at the beginning of 2021. Of different ages and origins, they were all attending the Italian language school at the Presidio Caritas in Pachino. At a time when social closure accentuates even more the isolation in which many women already usually find themselves living, Correspondence focuses on the encounter, the sharing of the story and an active participation in the creative process. For the protagonists of this work, the Italian language course and participation in a project of this kind represent one of the very few opportunities for confrontation outside the family, if not one of the very rare occasions to leave the house. The correspondence held, created a narrative in fragments of the everyday life of farm workers and their families, the integration full of adversity of a workforce, necessary to the Sicilian agricultural sector and often a victim of exploitation. Glimpses of landscapes, objects, suggested presences and small gestures constitute a subjective diary, an archive of fragments of a reality that is often invisible, even more so because observed from the point of view of women. Some of the images taken by the protagonists of the project with their mobile phones were reworked, laser printed on transparent paper and transformed into black and white negatives. Details of others were extrapolated to expose a series of large silk sheets with cyanographic emulsion to sunlight. A video documents the action carried out by the group of women among the greenhouses of Pachino.

A project for Ragusa Foto Festival 2021

made with the support of
Fondazione CON IL SUD,
Presidenza dell’Assemblea Regionale di Sicilia
and Associazione Collezione Donata Pizzi ETS

in partnership with
Presidio Caritas Italiana,
Fondazione di Comunità Val di Noto.

- 13 silver gelatin prints on baryta paper from laser negative, ed. 1/5
- video, 3'37"
- 5 cyanotypes on silk, 90x135 cm, ed. 1/5