Open Theme 1st place winner

"In the form of dew
may it spread over the grass
this body of mine.”
(Michinoya Togen)

These verses belong to the Japanese tradition of the “jisei no ku”, brief poems expressing a farewell to the world by samurai, monks and poets who, sensing the approach of death, wished to write some words to leave one last trace before leaving.
Some of these poems evoke melancholic atmospheres, others convey peace, a recovered harmony, almost relief; some see death as a serene journey home, some as a travel to a new world.
The self-portraits of this project are a reinterpretation of the atmospheres and sensations that can be perceived by reading the poems. They take inspiration by the verses to build a fantastic world, beyond time and reality, a world in which death is a moment of suspension, a step towards the unknown. The verses of these poems often suggest a view of the death as a return of our body to the nature to which it belongs; for this reason all the photographs were shot in natural landscapes, later transformed through a free use of color, in order to create a dimension sited on the boundary between reality and imagination.

Silvia Montevecchi is born in Florence in 1994. Intrigued by photography from an early age, in 2014 she enrolls in Libera Accademia di Belle Arti (L.A.B.A.) in Florence, where she graduates with honors in photography in 2018. Between 2017 and 2018 she exposes some of her works at the Thehys Gallery in Florence and at the Seipersei gallery in Siena. Right in collaboration with Seipersei publishing house, in april 2018 she publishes the photographic book Jisei no ku, and in the occasion of the book launch is exhibited her first solo show.
In november 2018 she takes part in Paratissima Art Fair in Turin, where she displays the photographic project Jisei no ku, which wins the Azimut Capital Management prize. Between December 2018 and January 2019 her works are exhibited in a personal show in the offices of the Azimut group in Turin and in a collective exhibition in ArtGallery37 in Turin. Her work Jisei no ku is published on the January issue of ClickMagazine.
During her artistic training she develops an interest for the use oh photography as an instrument for self-expression and as a vehicle for a projection of inner realities in the outer world.