Antonia's Garden (2007-2011) by Marisa Portolese
Over the past several years, I have produced images, which center on familial themes, the role of the women within this institution, intimacy, autobiography and the complex relationship between mother and child. Focusing on issues relating to identity, displacement, abandonment and maternal mortality, these concerns have been in explored in Antonia’s Garden. This body of work comprises of a video piece and over 35 photographic images made up of staged vignettes of intimately autobiographical familial observations. The photographs consist of composed scenes redolent with rich background stories of domestic life. I have photographed family members that have been caught in quiet moments of reflection, and juxtapose these photographs with domestic spaces, landscape and still life, in an effort to situate the viewer in a geographical and emotional space. Antonia’s Garden deals with accounts of people living on the boundaries of emotional survival, and is at times about loss and the failure to connect and communicate.
Marisa Portolese is a Montreal, Canada based photographer.
To view more of Marisa's work, please visit her website
Mother and Child
The Ordinary Instant
Thinking Aloud at your gravesite
Flowers
Wish
Father and Child
Flight
Calabria
Mother
Child
Carnations (A Mother’s Tears)
Family
Serafino
Ascent
Antonia
Wanderlust
Dead Horse
Alone in the Garden
Shimmer
A Descent into the Maelstrom