PREGNANT WITH ALL THE SEASONS  (2023-24)

The time of agriculture follows the rhythm of seasons, of birth, growth 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.

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. Among 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.

In today's world dominated by industrial agriculture and mass distribution, sustaining small-scale, non-mechanized organic farming is increasingly challenging. Climate change adds to the uncertainties. But the issues concerning work, food production and the possibility of maintaining present ecosystems alive in the future are common to every place on earth, and Francesca is just one example of choice and resistance.

[Francesca is also a writer and blogger (La Raccontadina), the title of this project is an excerpt from a text of hers.]