5mins with Davies Zambotti
Italian born photographer Davies Zambotti mesmirises with her delicate abstract landscapes. Her latest project Landa featured in #PHOTOGRAPHY Magazine, The Europe Edition uses a palette of soft greens and blues flying by - drawing you into an intimate tale of her emotion and uncertainty about the surrounding world which rings deep especially during the current climate.
Hi Davies, could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into photography?
Photography has always been part of my life. Since I was a kid I was attracted by film and film processing I didn’t know anything about it but I could see something magic in it. Getting older my interest grew including video-art and film-making. I consider my research as a chemistry between those mediums and the most hidden part of my/anyone’s life.
In your project Landa, you photograph minimalistic landscapes; do you prefer shooting landscapes to any other medium of photography?
I’m very attracted by the less common landscapes, which are able to express a certain poetry. Minimal is essential. Into a poetic minimalism one can find all the little details of a life that I’m trying to “develop” through video and photography. The human being, in this phase of my life, is not really present in my work but I’m studying and observing the human subject, just keeping it in the borders.
Would you say that you have or have found a style of photography?
Style is something that changes with me, it is molded and it changes according to my rhythms. In this moment my style is perfectly shaped on a personal research of a poetic blurred vision of a confused society.
You share poetic lines along with the images in Landa, could you explain the relationship in Landa between the photographs and the words?
Poetry is an important part of my work. I’m not a poet but I use words and images for balancing a whole vision. As I was shooting Landa, the words came simultaneously and naturally.
Landa is a personal project, as a European do you feel through photography, that it is a way to deal with the current world politics, especially with Brexit?
My work relates to the self emotional and physical sphere - I create a connection with European united through the memory and the common historical background which mirrored itself into and through the blurred landscape of my very personal experience. In this way my "private" becomes universal.
With your project Landa, you say you observe the everyday through the lens, while doing this do you strive to find the beautiful in the everyday?
My way of life passes through the processed filtered lens of video and photography. Considering the beauty of everyday life I am more interested in what I can’t see. To see into the hidden part of it, the words untold, what is part of that darkness that we are not willing to see.
Although your photographs capture movement they are soft and calming; as humans are frequently rushing do you think you are showing how tranquility can be embraced in the everyday?
L'introspezione che segue la vertigine è cio che i miei lavori suggeriscono.
The softness in my images comes from a focus between the subject and I. While the first impression can be relaxing, at a second, deeper glance, one can feel a kind of discomfort. If you can’t perfectly focus on the subject you are destabilized but at the same time you can focus on some hidden weaknesses.
Using photography as a method of observation, is it possible to observe the shift in people or place now because of the current political differences separating people?
Photography is efficient in observing, understanding and unveiling society mechanisms. In this uncertain time of migration issues impacting heavily on Western society, Landa freezes and captures the collective memory and weakness of the USA limiting humanity in front of each others eyes.
Do you have any similar projects in the works? What’s next for you?
At the moment I’m working on a video project and the main focus is the attempt to underline the intimate reaction to life in our society (Western European), but it is too early for talking about that.
Thanks Davies!
Follow @interstizi on instagram - www.interstizi.weebly.com
