Marta Primavera
Marta Primavera was born in Arezzo (Tuscany) in 1979, she lives and works between Italy and UK.
She studied Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Siena and Photography at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, in Italy.
From 2008 she used photography as a wide artistic expression and as a potential new opportunity for her personal research. In 2011 she started to investigate how history of art influences our times and how people are connecting with that using the self portrait, the archive research and the photomontage technique.
Her works have been shown and published in Italy and abroad, including Mois Européen de la Photographie Luxembourg 2013, Monthly Photo, Seoul 2012 and Imago art Gallery, London 2012.
She took part in different exhibitions supervised by the most representatives photography experts in Italy us Giovanna Calvenzi, Renata Ferri, Oliviero Toscani, Filippo Maggia and Daniele De Luigi.
Her project A little bit of everything from the past to the present have won Premio Celeste 2014 and Labò Prize 2011 and was recently shortlisted as one of the winners of Combat prize and X Off Fotografia Europea, and also selected for Slideluck Bologna and San Fedele Prize.
Concept
A little bit of everything from the past to the present is a photography project I did between 2011 and 2014 to analyze the connection between art history and our times. I think that the beauty of old art is of great value for our continent, and the history of art is a part of the European DNA. To examine these reflections I did this project using photomontage. My pictures are a combination of 4 steps:
– First I took photographs of some old original paintings in the V&A Archives, Mantua Archives, Palazzo Vitelli alla Cannoniera in Città di Castello and Palazzo Vescovile in Arezzo.
– Then I shot images of objects from present day life.
– I included in the collage my self portrait interpreting characters of today.
– At the end, I created new photographs by combining these three elements.
In conclusion, like a young child trying on her mother’s shoes I am comparing myself to the works of our magnificent past and wondering if my generation is overwhelmed or inspired by the power of the artistic past. Or, maybe we are ignoring it? My hope is to bring people out from their everyday lives to give their hearts longing, the desire for knowledge and the search for something beyond, for an elsewhere beyond any kind of experience.
