PREGNANT WITH ALL THE SEASONS  (2023-24)

The time of agriculture follows the rhythm of seasons, of birth and death, the exchange between living and non-living beings. It repeats itself, yet it’s always different in the unfolding of stories and history—those of humans, techniques and ecosystems, and on top of that, climate change.
It is a time of hard work and labour, of waiting and observation: at least, this is how Francesca, a woman farmer since twenty years, experiences it. She cultivates alone her land, by following traditions and biological flows, attentive to biodiversity and environmentally sustainable production, seeking balance in productive cycles, engaging with a profound sense of wonder and poetry.
It is also a time made up of repetitive actions, gestures as a performance of the body in space, a dance through vegetables, soil, water, sky. The biological life cycles unfolding in the field encounter the presence of a female body that interacts with them, nourishes and is nourished.
Beyond the differences and the peculiar identity of each single flower or fruit, the photographs represent moments paused in the flow of time. In some instances the images follow the dance: on closer inspection, sometimes the sequences do not perfectly align with the passage of time and suggest possible short circuits. Nothing is completely determined or predictable in nature and our relation with it.

Through three main visual approaches—observational photography, still life, and serial arrangements—three parallel and intertwined paths develop. I spent time in the field together with Francesca, following her, observing her femininity, listening to sounds and silence, looking for signs in the soil, sky, leaves, movements of insects. In that shared time, I came to understand a bit more about time, womanhood, and nature. 


[Francesca is also a writer and blogger—La Raccontadina. The title of this project is an excerpt from a text of hers].