Photographer Monia Marchionni is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Chile – Never Again The Fog In The Desert’. To see Monia’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Alone, one of the rare trees in the desert

This series was born during a trip to Northern Chile in 2014, after meeting local families who accompanied me to discover the Atacama Desert, and that’s where I saw a hand carved more than eleven meters high coming out of the sand. A real request for help, aimed at witnessing all those hands that are underneath that belonged to people still without a name, without identity, victims of the Pinochet dictatorship: the disappeared. The dictator had all those suspected of having antigovernment ideas kidnapped, tortured, killed and disappeared. Many times, the victims were taken to real concentration camps from which they never left except to make the ‘death flights’ so sadly called because the corpses were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. Several prison camps were located in the Atacama Desert and therefore many remains are still buried in mass graves and covered with layers and layers of sand. From that moment there are poor daughters, wives and mothers who are still looking for some remnants of their beloved fathers, husbands and sons, still today, they call them mujeres del desierto – the wives of the desert.

They just want to mourn their loved ones and bring colorful paper flowers to their graves, which not even the sun will ever dry out.

I worked on the emotions of a mother who loses her child, on the disappearance, on the indescribable emptiness after a kidnapping, on the story only hinted at school.

The indifference of many in the face of war crimes envelops the entire desert like a thick and impossible fog, because those who do not see forget and those who forget do not believe in what has happened.

The fog devours the streets, the mountains, the whole sea. Fog is oblivion.

Monia Marchionni (Italy) is a pro photographer, expresses herself with staged photography, setting up scenes with objects and people to tell a place or a story through a visionary gaze. Her first series “Chile - Never Again the fog in the desert” dates back to 2014

From 2016 to 2019 she worked on the project “Fermo Visioni Extra Ordinarie” which became a book in 2021 with Giaconi Editore. 

From 2019 to 2022 she created “Misfolding” focused on the relationship between man and the environment.

In 2020 she won the Ghergo Prize with “Primo Amore” set on the beach of her town Porto San Giorgio.

 In 2020, during the first lockdown from Covid_19, she created "I Giorni Necessari". 

In 2023, during a journey to Zanzibar, she created “Zanj”, a photography and collage project.

Monia is Photographer of the Year 2025 – category “Special” IPA Awards.