Stefania Sammarro was born in Cosenza on April 4, 1988. Graduated from Dams with specialization in cinema at Unical, she then specialized in cinema photography. You collaborate with various newspapers, the online newspaper Nòtia, the diocesan newspaper of Cosenza "Parola di Vita".
Researcher of a vision of the world linked to the classics of silent cinema and to the gaze belonging to a "world elsewhere", a lover of photography since childhood, which in 2006 becomes something physiological.
Reality and fiction, in his photographic conception, mix continuously: the eye does not limit itself to reproducing, but rather recreating, colours, souls, emotions and sensations distant from time and from reality itself.
Strongly linked to her land, to the faces and its colors, many of her photographic projects related to Calabria, and not, have been awarded and published in various important magazines, including international ones, such as the Art + Commerce of New York, Photo Vogue Italia, Nextdoormodel, Artabout, Organiconcrete, Lux Lit, UIF, BEAUTIFUL SAVAGE, ARTFreeLife, Epipaideia, Rivista “Si”, The Portfolio, Electru.de, Fotografare etc.
A girl of today, who appreciates what her country has offered her, including what she has been able to receive from the people and from the academic training offered by the schools of Calabria, perhaps a little too much theory (which she claims has an excellent educational profile) and little practice, as is well known, in certain Italian regions finding a job is really very difficult. But despite this she believes that there are still possibilities and she intends to seek them with all her enterprising and determined spirit of hers, which she really does not lack.
Stefania or Ania which do you prefer?
Better Stephanie! Ania is the stage name that I have been carrying for some time, but my true soul is inside Stefania's life and with her I live with stories, sounds and visions. While the wind is the ideal companion on my journey.
What is photography for you?
I delight in photography, in light and in the moment in the desperate battle to prevent time from passing. A photograph is death and life at the same time. The only protagonist of the photographs is the soul, above all of female figures, represented in remote interiors or gardens; lost and captive souls who wander through dreamlike atmospheres, silences, reflections in a mirror, ancient landscapes, visions projected into a "non-time" and a "non-place", suspended between reality and fiction. In addition to female portraits, the photographic art I propose also flows into reportage and street photography, in the continuous search for situations, emotions and faces, unique projections of my interiority, expressing myself in every shot, projecting emotions and visions into it personalities that seek to change reality itself.
Your places really look like theater scenes or scenes built for cinema.
Surely my way of recording images is closer to what I actually feel, where photography becomes the caption of the word, for me as for silent cinema what matters is the importance of the gesture and then what I love most is transforming place and consecrate it into something unreal.
Your photos interpret a sort of environmental decadence, buildings surprised by nature which has now trapped them to itself, and figures that are not always identifiable and hidden by timeless drapes and costumes, what is the real reading?
I am a spectator of the moment, of that instant, I often put the woman as the protagonist, trying to explain the meaning of love, which does not exist or does it exist? it is obvious that with this meaning the images appear melancholy, perhaps as I see my land in part.
You live in a beautiful region that doesn't offer many job opportunities in the field of cinema or professional photography, how do you plan to face the future?
What I ask is to achieve a certain economic independence, this would allow me to be more free to express myself professionally. In this period I'm photographing corners of Calabria to build a book that I can show and take elsewhere. In fact, I'm leaving for London, I have some ideas and I want to bring them to fruition.
Are you telling me that you would like to leave Italy?
I hope not, I would certainly like to gain experience elsewhere, I'm interested in Berlin for its contamination between art and entertainment, but then I'd like to return with all the experience, even if it's difficult now to think what the future of young people here in Italy will be like. The thing that I repeat and that I would like to advise everyone is to "believe more in yourself" with the strength of the contrast as one can ideally think of between love and death, light and shadow.
"Just like Eros and Thanatos, the drives of love and death, so is "Stefania and Ania" and what photography represents for her".
