Photomanipulation 1st place winner

The series "Anonymia" emerges as a critical and poetic investigation into female identity, social masks, and the construction of memory. Through portraits of 19th-century women with their faces elegantly concealed, it does not merely evoke a vintage aesthetic but raises questions related to representation, visibility, and oblivion. The female figures, devoid of physiognomy, become symbols of a codified elegance, but also of an erased, hidden or denied identity.
The techniques that simulate aged photographs, with signs of deterioration, add another layer of meaning: the images appear as fragments of an elusive past, reminding us how the history of ordinary people is an incomplete narrative, with gaps and silences. Only the classic, dignified posture remains a symbol of resistance, the last glimmer of humanity in a context of depersonalization.
The work thus invites us to reflect on the fragility of memory, the construction of identity and the power dynamics that govern representation. In an age of hypervisibility, it prompts us to consider the value of invisibility and the tension between the desire to be seen and the temptation to hide in order to find oneself.
“Anonymia” wants to ask the viewer: What is visible? What is hidden? What is forgotten?

Foto Marvellini is the collective fouded by Andrea and Carlo Marvellini, based in Milan (Italy). Friends
for decades, they started their first joint artistic project in 2011, sharing their cultural interests, as well as their respective preferred techniques (Andrea the installations, Carlo photography).
In the project they embody two brothers, descendants of a legendary family of Milanese
photographers, the Marvellini family, from which also derive their pseudonyms. Foto Marvellini is a
loving tribute to photography from the 19th century to the beginning of 20th. With perturbing
language, somewhere between the familiar and the fantastic, the collective declines the theme of
the 'fake' in photography, plays with the absurd, celebrates past techniques, creates credible
ancestors and faithful post-mortems. With their deliberately "deceptive" works, Foto Marvelli invites
the viewer to remember that images in general, by nature, trigger and shape his emotions and his
understanding of the world. The limited edition fine-art works are produced on baryte paper
printed in darkroom, often treated with a chemical processes that antique the supports without
affecting the silver salts of the support.