Carlotta Guerra was born in Italy in 1976. She got a degree in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Bologna with a specialization in contemporary art and cinema. She worked for a Contemporary Art Museum in Italy for almost 6 years. In 2013 she decided to quit her job and move to Amsterdam where she began to pursue her lifetime passion: photography. She graduated from the FOTOfactory Amsterdam in January 2018 with a video installation entitled FULL EXPOSURE. Her projects—both images and videos—come from her personal life experiences. She investigates themes related to the complex and delicate tension between fears and desires, past and present, movement and stillness. Carlotta uses photography as a therapeutic process; a way to express her inner story and as a means of self-discovery and self-awareness. Her projects have been published on digital Italian and American magazines and she has exhibited in some private and public institutions in California. She currently shares her time between Bologna, Berlin, and Los Angeles.
The Gift
The Gift is about the effect and presence of encounters in our life. It inspects the unexpected and unusual relations that connect very different people and their lives. It is an exploration of the elusive interspace where human beings meet each other, and memories and new paths come together.
I met Miriam in 2015 in California. Miriam was an old woman slowly fading. She told me she was really passionate about photography. She used to go around all the time with her beloved camera—her name typed on the strap—taking tons of pictures. Since she couldn’t use it anymore, she and her daughter Linda decided to pass the camera to me. I received it as a gift on Thanksgiving Day. It immediately became more to me than just an object. Suddenly I felt I was meaningfully related to a person that I didn’t know before and to her life as well. I decided to investigate and examine the intangible space of relation that the camera created. The Gift was shot on film.
To view more of Carlotta Guerra’s work please visit her website.