© Giulia Berto
Shutter Hub member Giulia Berto is an Italian photographic artist based in Ireland. Her work draws from the personal, creating atmospheric imagery and meditative scenes evocative of her own feelings. Working predominantly with the medium of analogue photography, she engages with themes of love and intimacy, home, emotional displacement and identity.
She has lived in London, Berlin, and New York, where she studied large format photography under Guggenheim Fellows Greg Miller and Andrea Modica. Her work has won various awards and regularly features in publications such as B+W Photography, HuffingtonPost and Visual Artists’ News Sheet (VAN). Her photographs are routinely exhibited worldwide including Circulation(s) Festival (Paris, 2018), The Print Swap (Athens, 2021) and ICP Photobook Fest (New York, 2022).
What is home? The Land of Eternal Winter is a new body of work investigating the intimate relationship between ‘self’ and ‘place’. What makes us who we are? What do we carry with us? In The Land of Eternal Winter, I explore the idea of home and belonging, isolation and identity.
© Giulia Berto
I am a migrant. I was born in Italy and relocated to Ireland after many nomadic years. Each place I lived in had its own character and quirks. Every time I left; I lost something. Every time I arrived; I gained something. Pieces of me constantly reshuffled and reconfigured. I am not sure where or what home is anymore. I long to belong. Is this home? At a loss for understanding, I embark on a downward fall into my inner self in a quest to unravel the answer.
© Giulia Berto
Set in Ireland, the project combines black and white and colour imagery and encompasses three strands: identity, memory, and place. Identity is performed through black and white minimalistic self-portraits; memory resurfaces via black and white abstract photograms and place is embodied by desolate colour landscapes. Melancholic sceneries, overwhelming colours, ghostly self-portraits, and ethereal objects come together to create a winding story of vivid hallucinations and fragmented realities.
© Giulia Berto
© Giulia Berto
The Land of Eternal Winter is a long-term and ongoing series created with 4 x 5 large format cameras and in the darkroom with an alternative photographic process. The project received support for its development from the Arts Council of Ireland in the form of an Agility Award in 2021.
© Giulia Berto
© Giulia Berto
This work is still in progress but I would love to start presenting parts of it in whatever form this may be. I am very much looking to connect, begin a dialogue and collaborate with other arts professionals. I am based in Dublin but am also in London frequently.
To find out more about Giulia’s work, visit her website here.
Got any questions? Email us at info@shutterhub.org.uk
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