The journey of the woman in love

Since 2020 I have been researching romantic love as a cultural experience, induced and socialized especially for the female gender.

I first came up with “My heart is full”, a reaction to a married friend's questioning about my state of mind living alone during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the idea of loneliness implicit in his enquiry, I began to photograph my daily life as if I was being observed by an imaginary partner, and to look for symbols of the cycles of the love experience in my domestic space.

Romantic advice phrases — usually found in women’s magazines — together with traces of past relationships were integrated into this body of work, resulting in the (unpublished) photobook “Trilogy of Love”.

More recently, I've started exploring archive photos taken by ex-boyfriends. In “With just a little luck, you might never fall in love again”, I've selected images in which I stare directly at the photographer/lover and have made a tight crop around my face. The images represent the period when romantic love played a central role in my life and the gaze of the loved one somehow defined my identity.