PREGNANT WITH ALL THE SEASONS  (2023-24)

Francesca is a farmer, she lives in Tuscany where she cultivates her field.
In the contemporary context of the agri-food industry and large scale distribution, it is increasingly hard to make small scale organic, non-mechanized and biodiversity-conscious production economically sustainable. Added to this are the uncertainties and risks linked to climate change. Despite this, Francesca resists and persists in her life choice, cultivating, together with vegetables and flowers, a profound sense of wonder and discovery. Knowledge and listening to nature, to cycles and times, to the balance between living and non-living beings are essential for her to grow food (as her full-time job) and at the same time to find a way of living in harmony with nature. Between life and death, interdependencies and relationships, signs and messages to interpret, leaving room for poetry.
Within this thematic frame, central focus of the photographic series is the gaze on a certain type of femininity, which challenges and questions some of the main issues related to the idea of the female body, and female action and role in society.
Francesca is also a single mother and a writer: she has a very popular blog (La Raccontadina) and has published four books so far about cultivation and about life, with a sort of activist approach towards ecological issues and sustainable life styles in contrast with consumerist, superficial and extractivist approaches typical of the hyper capitalist society and way of relating with nature.
The project is organized around three main visual strands, dedicated respectively to the everyday life in the field with its small and big wonders and "uglinesses”, to the gestures of the body at work sort of following a laborious open air dance, and to the botanical products of nature and work.