Vanessa Lucrezia Francia

“UNTIL MY LAST DROP OF BLOOD” is a series that interrogates the construction of identity through the observation of fragility, desires and resilience of memory. While creating a visual dialogue based on personal and collective histories, I interacted with my family in one space, our Home, and analyzed how generational and personal trauma can reshape or transfer to a single individual and a collectivity, creating a bounce between what is inherited and what is experienced. I mixed archival family photographs, intimate portraits, and newly created images, to build a dialogue between past and present, using photography as a tool and as a non-judgemental confessional. A project born as a provocation after a furious fight, but through the process it has transformed as a playful rediscovery of the parental role of Giovanni and Gabriella narrated from the point of view of a daughter. Thanks to a very rich family archive, I found myself playing between past and present, reinterpreting their stories, their cultural backgrounds and started to look at them as human beings and not just as family. These images bring to light all the unspoken words, silent dreams, needs that have accompanied us as a family and single individuals from our childhoods and that repeatedly peep into our head. Ordinary habits become extraordinary rituals, creating a timeless and ageless playground where roles are almost reversed. They are not necessarily family rules, however they are insurmountable thoughts, sometimes dogmas that mark the life of each of us, becoming projections from generation to generation. This project approaches the complexities of interpersonal relationships with a sweet and sour Irony.