Sara Zanella
The Way Home
[ FUJIFILM/YOUNG TALENT AWARD 2016 RUNNER UP ]
I’m driven by instinct. I started my photography journey when I was 16 in high school. I was attracted by the endless flow of life, by the changes, by catching what was making my day, I started to take pictures of my surroundings and relationships with irrationality and playfulness. I was fascinated by the changes that made up my day and the simple beauty in every day life. This is where photography was born for me, and my desire to document comes out of a natural will.
My approach to photography is personal and done in a diary form. After high school I moved from Italy to Denmark to study at Fatamorgana, school of Danish Art Photography. I was attending my courses, I got a boyfriend, built a home and an extended family there. Those relationships encouraged me to immerse myself in a intimate way to a foreign city and culture. I use my curiosity for travel and to explore places I’ve never been, photographing life and the people I meet along the way.
I want to create a connection with our inner personality, our emotional layers and show the intensity of these. My goal is building a record of humanity in a poetic and direct way.Last winter I spent a month in Moscow, photographing the city and people in their intimate and familiar spaces. My plan was to travel for another month thru Russia, in this way I could discover more about the country and the culture from the capital city to the smallest settlement on the Arctic Ocean. I stopped for few nights here and there in towns and villages as I made my way to Teriberka, I was welcomed and hosted by young people like myself in their homes, I photographed the locals,the lifestyle, the harsh winter terrain.
Thru my photography I convey the connection that I felt to the richness and diversity of our common humanity. This project is call The Way Home. I am ready to publish the first part of this project with Brothas and I would use to fund for the publication of the first part of the project.
Short Bio
I was born in Italy in 1993. I moved to Denmark to attend a year course at Fatamorgana, Danish School of Art photography in Copenhagen where I am based. The final project was a book, Winter, about my love relationship, unpublished. From November 2015 to February 2016 I moved to Russia for the project The Way Home where I travel from Moscow to Teriberka for 4 months. In February 2016 I started a travel exhibition, Never Hide, a series of photos from my early diaries to the ongoing project in Russia and I self published the catalogue of it. I exhibited in Moscow and in Copenhagen. In April 2016 I moved to New York City to photograph a new project in USA and to work at Magnum Photos as intern.
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