– Versione italiana a pagina 2 –
Private Outlands is a project by Lisa Mazzei, featuring images that captivate us through the poetry of these desolate lands that soothe the soul. Silent and seemingly abandoned, they feel as though they were left behind by humans searching for distant shores.
They recall paintings in which calm tranquility served as inspiration for artists whose remarkable works shaped entire styles: the visions of Giovanni Fattori, and the older yet ever-poetic landscapes of John Constable and William Turner, English Romantic painters and masters of landscape art.
The unexpected appearance of female bodies catches us by surprise, provoking sensations that alter our perception of these spaces. They are young, nude women wandering through these deserted lands without destination or reason.
Yet Lisa Mazzei herself guides us toward an understanding of these images through her words:
“The two words, Private and Outlands, evoke two opposing dimensions: a personal, intimate space and a vast, distant land. These bodies inhabit those territories differently, poised between the epic and the intimate, in a new and natural state. Nudity is nothing more than a return to the essential, an act of shedding that brings the woman back to a raw, primary presence, in direct confrontation with the epicness of the landscape.”
In the photographs, taken between Italy and the United States, the landscapes at first glance appear similar. Constantly searching for differences that allow us to locate places, with attentive eyes, we want to believe that a certain plant was born and grew here in Italy, with those leaves, with that scent.
After losing ourselves in the woods like Little Red Riding Hood, we rediscover the desire to grasp the message carried by Lisa Mazzei’s images: a sense of freedom that reconnects us with natural energies.
Those nude bodies immersed in a Nature unaware of being photographed represent a return to the purity of emotions and images. They suggest both a return and a beginning, something ancient and remote that has become relevant once again. A distancing from the critical weight of our lives, submerged beneath the dense fumes of unlivable cities.
It is a message calling us back to naturalness and original authenticity, for lives now weary and exhausted by a modernity that already feels ancient.
Lisa Mazzei is an Italian photographer and filmmaker. After graduating in Fine Arts in Florence, she specialized in Cinematography in Rome. As one half of the creative duo Lyzard Film, she focuses on music videos for Italian artists and fashion films. She has collaborated with brands such as Kodak, and her work has been exhibited at Pitti Uomo, Milano Unica, the Videoclip Italia Awards, and the Corinth Photography Festival.
