Antonia's Garden by Marisa Portolese

Issue 40

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