Shutter Hub member Dayana Sharon Marconi is an Italian artist, currently living in Rome. In 2012 she moved to London where she achieved a master certificate in teaching English as a second language and, subsequently, travelled to China starting to work and photograph across Asia, Europe and US with the aim of exploring different cultures and embracing diversity.

In 2018 Dayana gained her MA Photography with Distinction at Falmouth University, creating the two-year project ‘I can hear you now’ whilst working as Distant Learning Academic Officer to improve the online students’ experience at Falmouth Flexible. She is currently enrolled in a Screenwriting course lead by Richard Walter, UCLA Head of Screenwriting, and released by Shore Scripts LA.

Dayana is interested in representing individuality and her personal perception of the world and finds this complexity require the use of still and moving images and music score, collaborating with different artists throughout the world. For Dayana photography and moving image are means of self-expression: ‘getting inspiration from the external world and using it as a mirror’.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

In my work, I am interested in exploring the ways in which photography can be used as a tool for social and psychological research, investigating her inner world as well as the ones of the portrayed individuals and viewers, who will use their own personal experience to live interpret my imagery. In my portraiture I am particularly interested in the process of releasing those negative emotions commonly kept as a secret in our daily lives.

As a sufferer of anxiety disorders, I often feel the urge to scream out in pain but this inner pressure is never expressed because our lives are managed by social norms that stigmatise these behaviours while asking people to be a constant positive role-model and enhancing a sense of isolation in those individuals affected by similar conditions: this is why I opened myself to the world with the aim of enhancing a constructive dialogue around Mental Health issues, still considered taboo by our culture and, possibly, empathy through the observation of my body of work.

The author and my sitters follow the same emotional process and the act of screaming becomes something constructive rather than disruptive: an act used to release negative feelings, to create a void that can leave space to those new possibilities life can offer. Facial expressions and body-movements become something that the audience has the chance to interpret also thanks to the use of long-exposure.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

A great variety of visual solutions and artistic choices have been employed to create “I can hear you now”. Photography, moving images, a short documentary, sounds and score create a 360-degrees experience and viewers, following its Itinerary, can explore themselves while observing “the other”. Thanks to the collaboration with artists and different professionals, the project became adaptable to a wider and diverse audience: the artistic experience is accompanied by scientific and historical interpretations, the visual research by an analytical approach.

On my website users have the chance to follow a whole “Itinerary” and every step takes them to a deeper level of understanding of the subject matter and enables them to find further indication of the contents of each experiment and the processes and techniques used.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

© Dayana Marconi 2016/2018.

The short documentary “[ɪˈmaː.ɡoː]”, it was selected as semi-finalist at $2 Film Festival in NY, at London Lift-Off Festival Online and awarded at the Los Angeles Global Music Award with a Bronze Medal for the categories ‘Soundtrack collection’ and ‘Composition/Composer’.

Images from ‘I can hear you now’  have been exhibited in London and Italy, as well as in the Shutter Hub OPEN 2018 in London and Amsterdam. In March 2019 they will be part of the Shybuya Station Exhibition in Tokyo.

“ The whole project is a sophisticated assemblage of images and sounds/music that takes away the fear of the illness. It generates a profound empathy with the subject/s on screen. The film and the photos with the music, sounds and melodies, are sophisticated and at the same time an understandable representation of the pain, of the unease, of the obsession. I admired the technique, the courage of the choices made, the boldness of the message and the generosity on the whole huge talent capable of reading her own feelings, capable of dissecting them diligently with love and compassion in order to Load Explode Be Free.” – Ivana Massetti, Writer/Director/Producer based in Los Angeles.

Watch the [i’ma:.go:] documentary here.

Watch the ‘I can hear you now’ trailer here.

See Dayana’s Shutter Hub portfolio here, to find out more about her work.