This is an image of the Origami booklet included into the Dummy print of the book "Caterpillar", that will be self-published in a limited-edition of 25 copies, signed and numbered. Info and booking: dayanamarconiimage@gmail.com I chose to create origami with prints of some still shot in 120mm film, in order to make Photography to become an object and each time it is re-photographer, meanwhile in each image concepts like “me” or “my world” are manipulated, transformed and represented as something totally different. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/caterpillar/

This is an image included into the booklet insert into the dummy version of the book "Caterpillar" that will be self-published in a limited-edition of 25 copies, signed and numbered. Info and booking: dayanamarconiimage@gmail.com This photograph won a "Gold Award" at San Francisco Bay International Photography Awards 2020. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/caterpillar/

This is an image included into the dummy version of the book "Caterpillar" that will be self-published in a limited-edition of 25 copies, signed and numbered. Info and booking: dayanamarconiimage@gmail.com Starting each time from a symbolic image shot in analogue using long or multiple exposure and then transfiguring, painting, manipulating, destroying and recomposing each print; concepts like space, time, identity and depiction are completely redefined. Photography becomes an object and each time it is re-photographer, meanwhile in each image concepts like “me” or “my world” are manipulated, transformed and represented as something totally different. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/caterpillar/

I tried to transform the act of screaming, commonly considered as disruptive, in a constructive action that allows her sitters to release their negative emotions or trauma-related memories, creating a constructive dialogue around those Mental Health issues that are still considered a taboo in our culture. In this image, you can observe when the scream was emotionally "loaded". Further images: http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

The title of this section, as the number of the images it is made up of, have its origin in the duration of one of my panic attacks, that has lasted for twelve hours, and these self-portraits depict the photographer after those long periods of suffering. In most cases I can’t autonomously manage my camera, so I started collaborating with my companion. I maintained the full control of the photographic process but, thanks to this collaboration, I had the chance to show his perspective, too: what he sees in those moments, portraying my frailty and exposing, at the same time, an intimate relationship through a visual dialogue. Further images: http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

Creating them has been quite awkward because they portray my vulnerability, but this was something that has to be done, since with my work I want to fight the awkward, even if I constantly feel ashamed and I must remember myself I have the right to Load… Explode… and Be free. Further images: http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

With an experimental approach, I wanted to generate a dreamlike journey into my mind and my soul, depicting how I perceive, or misperceive, myself, how I see my past and the world. It is a symbolic representation of the process of reliving a trauma, my childhood, my memories, but, at the same time, I tried to symbolically show the sense of liberation from a burden to leave space to a better and unknown future. Suffering is a shared condition and this is represented by a sort of doppelgänger, another woman symbolically sharing some of my experiences, even if in a slightly different way. Further images and short-doc: : http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

The visual narration accompanies the interviews released by the Film Composer Elena Maro and the Phychologist and Neuropsychologist Dr Martina Gerbi. The first contributor explained how she collaborated with me and her multiple roles during the whole creation of my project, also showing how my images, a visual representation of the pain of others, can be “translated” in sounds. Dr Gerbi spent some words to explain the relationship between Psychology and Photography, the origins of Art-therapy and the potential of my project and its relation with Mental Health support and investigation. Further images and short-doc: http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

Writtend and directed by Dayana Marconi. Photography and English subtitles by Dayana Marconi. Video and editing by Alessio Mattia. Music and sound-design by Elena Maro. The short documentary has been selected as semi-finalist at the "$2 Film Festival" in New York, for the online screenings during "London Lift Off Festival" and it has been awarded for the categories “Soundtrack collection” and “Composition/Composer” with a Bronze Medal at the “Global Music Award” in Los Angeles. Further images and short-doc: http://www.icanhearyounowproject.com/

“EM GOT LOST IN LA – 20 places in which she couldn’t find herself” is a small project created during my MA Photography at Falmouth University, Cornwall. I have been asked to be inspired by one or more Edward Ruscha’s books, being completely free in the interpretation of his work and in its creation. I opted to express how I am currently feeling: as an individual who has lost her dreams, her inspiration, herself. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/emgotlostinla/

Using many elements that can be traced in Ruscha's production, I decided to create a fictional character, Em, who is living the same situation and is asking for help, who needs to be found. She is a woman mirroring another woman (me), but also representing a spiritual, psychological and emotional condition shared by many artists and individuals. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/emgotlostinla/

I tried to find my lost artistic inspiration and happiness wandering the streets of LA and physically looking for them, by giving them a humanised form I could chase. There are no descriptions of my images, but simple captions starting with a “Last seen…” and providing the exact location in which Em can be found. Did you find her? Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/emgotlostinla/

“American Diaries” is a small project photographed in analogue during the summer of 2016. New York, San Francisco, Oakland, Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Los Angeles: in all these cities I tried to understand and portray the essence of the United States observing their places and people. But a journey is also made of memories, and this is why I opted for film-photography. In my mind it recreated a sense of familiar even in a context I didn’t know. I froze those moments, I made them mine using those memories of my childhood thanks to the fun of experimenting with images that might be considered as vernacular, but in the end this medium became popular in all the world mostly thanks to vernacular Photography. These grainy small images recall in my mind old family albums and made those strangers people and places become more familiar. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/americandiaries/

While travelling, I constantly had the feeling that in all those cities something was hidden by a sort of overlapped reality: this is why I made an extensive use of multiple-exposition. My intention was to create a path, a sort of short story representing those multiple realities made of different places, alternated by photographs of strangers portrayed as they wanted to be represented, people I observed working or making art, people living their everyday lives. I decided to focus on those details that made what I was observing different: this work is not about the American dream and it doesn’t want to photograph catchy stories but common, and yet fascinating, places and individuals. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/americandiaries/

I was trying to catch all signals and also what was behind the surface. This is why I decided to mix lights and shadows, to connect a colorful reality to what can be found behind it: the mystery of the night, sad stories, missing people. I also made an extensive use of written words. Words to ask for help, words explaining peculiar theories, words that symbolically could represent all those mentioned different layers of the same overlapped reality. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/americandiaries/

PHOTOGRAPHER: Dayana Marconi FASHION DESIGNER & SKETCHES: Susanna Farina HAIRSTYLIST & MUA: Mary Cavaliere LOCATIONS: Relais Cattedrale, LOFT Club – Asti, Italy. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/forgottenbeauties/

The Industrial Archaeology takes in consideration the imperfect part of the world, analysing those places that have always been on the fringe of Society but fundamental for its development. Factories, stations and working-class areas are the darkest and most true side of our historical memory, this is why it results easy to forget them rather than better understand them. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/forgottenbeauties/

Those “Abandoned Places” represent the imperfect and “ruined” part of each individual, that side that we try to protect but that characterises us the most. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/forgottenbeauties/

With my cameraless project “Mind of a Photographer” I experimented with Cyanotype and Contact Printing, finding a new medium of self-expression. I have been diagnosed with a micro-aneurysm and a peripheral neurological damage and I suffer from anxiety disorder, culminating in panic attacks during stressing situations like medical examinations: in these circumstances, I usually seek refuge in my imagination. Mental images are important elements for a photographer, this is why I decided to create this series of “medical self-portraits” to depict my own brain during a creative process generated by a situation of distress. Inspired by blueprint, a process introduced in 1842 by Sir John Herschel, consisting of a contact-print reproduction of technical drawings generating a blue negative image, I used a series of Magnetic Resonance Images (negative prints), directly applied on solar paper, recreating the inverse process: from negative to positive. This path is also important since it represents that mentioned situation leading to positive mental images starting from a state of anxiety. Blueprint is a word often used as synonym of “plan”, which is something that can be linked to the working process of the MRI scan machine, that divides in “layers” the images of human anatomy and physiology. Project exhibited as part of "Photography Now 2019", Brick Lane Gallery, Shoreditch, London. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/mind-of-a-photographer/

I washed the solar paper into a bath of home-made 9g/L saline solution: this concentration of salt is similar to the one that can also be found in tears and human blood, liquid elements that, somehow, define who we are emotionally and scientifically speaking. Subsequently, these images have been scanned to conceptually recall the process of the MRI scan machine that generated the original negatives used during the creations of my cyan-blue prints. Images have been printed on Hahnemüle Pearl paper, made 100% of cotton, to minimize environmental impact, consistently with the re-use of medical materials and with the use of sunlight to create my imagery. Images from “Mind of a Photographers” are artifacts, a word that Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines as “objects showing human workmanship or modification as distinguished from a natural object”; but focusing on MRI, visual artifacts are anomalies seen during the visual representation and not present into the scanned body. This is why the final visual result of the creative process may vary according to the brightness of sunlight, temperature, exposure-timing, original negatives and saline solution (“machine-related”), but also by minor movements caused by a state of anxiety during the medical examination (“patient-related”) or artistic choices and decisions (“photographer-related”), generating differences and visual disturbances on the exposed solar paper. Ansel Adams stated, “The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it” and with this project my aim was to directly expose “those inches” to all viewers. Further images: http://www.dayanamarconiimage.com/project/mind-of-a-photographer/