Gomma Photography Grant 2023
Honeymoon
Photographer
Diambra Mariani
Honeymoon
22 Feb, 2024
This project is the photo album of my honeymoon in a small village in Zanzibar but it is also - and especially - my reflection on the concepts of exoticism and and travel escapism. It is the last chapter of a bigger project about romantic relationships that I have been developing in the last couple of years. “Travel was once a means of being elsewhere, or of being nowhere. Today it is the only way we have of feeling that we are somewhere. At home, surrounded by information, by screens, I am no longer anywhere, but rather everywhere in the world at once, in the midst of a universal banality - a banality that is the same in every country. To arrive in a new city, or in a new language, is suddenly to find oneself here and nowhere else. The body rediscovers how to look. Delivered from images, it rediscovers the imagination.” Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena
About the photographer
Diambra Mariani
I was born in Verona, Italy, in 1982. In 2008 I graduated from Milan Law Statale University and in 2009 I obtained a master’s degree in photography at IED (Venice, Italy). In 2011 I joined Prospekt Photo Agency, Milan. My pictures were exhibited in Italy and abroad (Angkor Photo Festival, Arles Le Nuit de L’Annee, Wonder photo Days Taipei, Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, DOC Field Barcelona...) and published, among others, on The Sunday Times Magazine, Liberation, MarieClaire, D La Repubblica delle Donne, Internazionale, Sette, L'Espresso, Vanity Fair, Corriere della Sera. My work has also been featured on several online magazines, such as GUP magazine, Phases Magazine, P3, Art Photo Index, Feature Shoot, Die Nacht, Lens Culture. Amongst my recognitions are: finalist at Gomma Prize. 2022, winner at Tokio Photo Competition, Honorable Mention at Px3 Paris, winner at Cortona New Visions Prize, Streamers/Celeste Prize, Inail Prospekt Award. For a long time photography has been my way to understand reality. Since I have decided to focus on autobiographical projects only, something has changed: manipulating my pictures has become a fundamental tool to do the same. In my artistic practice I mix photography with literature, drawings, texts and collage. I usually combine digital photos, Polaroids and intervened cyanot
