Photographer Antonella Gandini is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Rarefied’. To see Antonella’s body of work, click on any photograph.

The image questions us about what is visible and what is hidden from the everyday gaze. The forms evoked in “Rarefatti” reveal metamorphic aspects of nature, even more evident in the hybridization of applied artistic languages: analog photographic printing on silver gelatin paper, with interventions of drawing and, in some cases, collage. The result is an unstable relationship between the referent reality and its transformation, rendering certain aspects of nature unrecognizable, revealing the symbiosis of the animal and plant kingdoms. An aesthetic attitude poised between the permanence of the object and its transcendence. The harmony of the bodies expresses the sense of fragility and restlessness that pervades the world, the rapid transition between life and death, a vision that pushes the communicative limits of the image and its representability.

Born in 1958, Antonella lives in Monzambano — Mantua. She graduated from the University of Verona, with a thesis on Aesthetics regarding the poetry of the painter Renè Magritte, in the same city she attended painting and graphic courses at the Cignaroli Academy. Antonella was selected for the superior Drawing Course of the “Antonio Ratti” Foundation in Como, held by the artist Gerard Richter. She’s interested in a variety of expressive fields, exploring connection and language structures at the border between painting, photography and video art. In 1997, she produced her first video Presenze, winner of the prize Opera Prima Round 97, XVI” Cineteca of Rimini. Antonella increased her interest in photography, interpreting in a personal way the connection of image-representation and privileged the darkroom for developing. In 2009, she set up the solo photographic exhibit Lunanera in Palazzo Te, Mantua; the next year Il silenzio dell’invisibile, at the Cultural Center Luigi di Sarro, Rome. She then had exhibitions in Brescia, Palermo, Catania and at the Gallery “Luigi Ghirri” in Caltagirone. The artist is interested in newness topics and participates in several initiatives aimed towards the awareness of gender problems. Her book Diario Intimo, and is part of the series Memorie d’artista ,Peccolo editions, Livorno. In 2018, she participated in a solo exhibit in the “Matova & Rosenheim”, Stadtische Galerie Rosenheim. In 2019 in “Bookworks”, Studio Expurgamento, London, and in “Visuali italiane”, Roonee Gallery, Tokyo. For the metamorphic aspect of her images and the explicit contamination of languages she was invited to the 70° Premio Michetti, “Attraversamenti fra arte e fotografia”, Francavilla a Mare, Chieti. She is part of the collective Italian Women Photographers with which she participates in the exhibition Scolpite Palazzo Reale Milano -2021- In 2024 she was invited to participate in Merveilleuse utopie, the 19th international exhibition of surrealism, Maison Breton , s. Cirque Lapopie , France e Na mira dos espolhos, Exposicao Exposicao evocativa do centenàrio do Surrealismo 1924-2024, Casa de la Cultura de Paredes, Portugal.

All images and text © Antonella Gandini