Portrait nominee

Unbroken

I started thinking about the use of wet plate collodion technique in ancient times: the glasses often got broken, becoming useless. Then, I used the wet plate technique and after I broke the glasses, I decided to fix them, inspired by the kintsugi technique, a Japanese art in which something broken is not thrown away but is fixed with pure gold, making it a much more precious. This has also a psychological interpretation: it is a way of life in which wounds and scars make us stronger and unique. I mixed the kintsugi with the Tiffany technique to obtain a plate that tells a story: we have a chance of living multiple lives as when we fall, we rise.

Ursula Ferrara is an Italian photographer, painter and animation film director. She is the author of several short films awarded by the most important film festivals, as Cannes, Berlin, Venice. She started with her father’s Leica at the age of 13 and studied analogic photograpy at the Florence Academy. She take a PhD in film animation.She is passionate with ancient techniques, such as wet plate, and continues to experiment, with self-built cameras for ultra large format photography, including recently a camera van.
Web site: cameravan.it