Untainted Territory
Untainted Territory is a photographic project that explores intimacy, vulnerability, and transformation through the relationship between two women whose lives have been deeply intertwined by time, geography, and emotional experience.
Over several years, I have photographed Valentina, a woman twenty years younger than me, whose presence in front of the camera reveals a rare sensitivity within a contemporary context. Our relationship began as a friendship but has evolved into a complex bond that exists across multiple dimensions: I am, at once, her friend, her witness, and her creative accomplice, and at times, a maternal or protective figure. She, in turn, becomes a muse, a collaborator, and a catalyst for new artistic explorations, including my foray into experimental filmmaking.
The origin of the project lies in an act of surrender: one day, Valentina asked me to photograph her nude. This gesture, far from being provocative, emerged from a deep need to be seen, to inhabit her body with honesty, and to affirm herself within her own image. From that moment on, the camera became a space of trust, where the gaze does not intrude, but accompanies.
The development of the project has been shaped by shared experiences of grief: the loss of my parents and of her mother. These absences have transformed our relationship and have imbued the images with an emotional charge that oscillates between fragility, resilience, and reconstruction. Photography becomes a territory where we both navigate pain, but also the possibility of re-signifying it.
Visually, Untainted Territory is constructed through a timeless aesthetic. All images were captured on 35mm film, reinforcing a deliberate distance from digital immediacy. Valentina’s body is not represented through spectacle, but through its naturalness, introspection, and quiet intensity. The way she inhabits the frame evokes another era, a different rhythm—closer to intuition than performance.
This project proposes a reflection on the connection between women, the bonds that evolve over time, and the emotional territories that open through grief, growth, and personal discovery. More than a series of portraits, it is a shared space of intimate resistance, where the image becomes an act of care and memory.
