NINETEEN

GIADA CALAMIDA

// Giada is based in Imbersago, near Milan, Italy. She particularly enjoys reportage/documentary photography, capturing moments that tell stories. This time Giada shared a set of photos of a project she calls 19. 19 as the year when it all began, 19 as in Covid, 19 as in the stories she wants to tell.

“The human figure is fundamental in my photography, whether they are posed or “stolen” portraits,” she says.

As a self-taught amateur photographer, she develops her photography by reading and attending workshops.

“The purpose of art is to represent not the external appearance of things, but their innermost meaning.”

Aristotle

What draws you to the arts?

“I love art in all its forms, dance, theater, painting, sculpture … I’m not an expert but I’m curious.“

What do you like best about this photo project?

“I was working on this project for 5 months, in the photos you will see I wanted to represents workers at their workplace during Covid. I would like to thank all those who took part in the project and that gave me an enormous help.”

Giada conceived this project during the pandemic months in Italy. “I was very impressed by the mandatory lockdown and its effect on the workers, my husband’s business had already closed down in 2018 and I often wondered during this period what would have happened if we still had our own business — a family of 4 people without any earnings for several months. But we were lucky, in fact the trade he is now working in has not been affected at all by the closures. This is how my idea came about, my intention was to tell a story of emotions, loss, sense of suspension, sense of powerlessness, isolation, resignation but not only bad feelings, also hope, resilience, for those who have lost so much.”

So Giada went with her camera to document the stories of places where activities had closed down, and of people, people who experienced the lockdown in their own way. She wanted to show how they were able to reinvent themselves, and also those who were forced to wait.

The title of each picture is the number of total days of forced inactivity. “The realities that people suffered during the lockdown were many and I had to make a choice, this is why I decided to focus on the territory of Merate (LC), Italy, a small town of about 14000 inhabitants.”

Images may be cropped for layout. Click on the photos to see the full images and to see the image title.