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Vittoria Mentasti

Vittoria Mentasti is an Italian artist widely known for her photography. A working photojournalist and documentary photographer, Her work has been published in TIME magazine, The New Yorker, Le Monde Magazine, IO Donna, Newsweek, CNN.com, and the list goes on. Mentasti is currently taking editorial assignments and continuing personal projects after finishing her work on the Gaza Strip in Israel (2014).

Early Life & Career

Born in Turin, Italy (1986), a passion for photographing her friends and the world around her soon turned into makeshift darkrooms in her bedroom and an in depth experimentation with film photography. This passion lead Mentasti to attend university at the Brera Academy of Arts in Milan, where she completed a BFA in New Media Studies. She then furthered her education by studying photojournalism and documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Like many immersive photojournalists, Mentasti derives her expository images by soaking in the entirety of her surroundings in each of the cultures she explores.

Style & Technique

Mantasti is an artist and a photographer, but more specifically she is a photojournalist. Mentasti works with digital, wet process, and even infrared photography. In particular, she tends to work in film when she is working on a lengthy project or a story that feels personal to her. Her journeys to broken countries and war-torn areas span across the world and last for months at a time. In contrast to her work with film she has explored infrared photography including drone photography and the effects that auto-piloted aerial vehicles have on civilians. Inspired by numerous photographers and artists, in an article for Fantom,Mentasti recalls that Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillman had an immense impact on her love of photography. However, her biggest influence has been the people who have let her into their lives and become not only her subjects but her motivation to stay present and not dissociate herself from her work.

Notable Features
 * Dead Sea

While the Dead Sea is actually a lake, Vittoria Mentasti visited Amman, Jordan in order to work on this series documenting the spirituality and serenity connected to its environment. The Dead Sea is situated at the lowest point on Earth, so many of her photographs are hazy yet ethereal in the ways that light catches fog and bathes her landscapes in warmth; reflecting both the physical and spiritual healing properties of the area. Mentasti describes it as a place where ones body and surroundings are intimately connected. Many of the photographs in this collection therefore show a certain symmetry between Earth and sky, as well as reflections of the landscape that show how similar the two are, and in such close proximity, they create a facade that they are in fact a singular entity. Further still her photographs of the salt crystals juxtaposed with flecks and droplets of water raining down on her subjects are delicate and full of life, even in the absence of life in the Dead Sea.


 * A Woman With Two Names

In order to document "A Woman With Two Names," Mentasti traveled to Nunuvat, in the Canadian Arctic, where the Native Inuit's way of life has changed and adapted drastically to modern day. The general decline in standards of living and the rising social challenges in Nunuvat are largely attributed to the Canadian Government and Church. Their combined pressure to assimilate gradually pushed the Inuit—who at the start of the 20th century still practiced nomadic ways of life— off their land, into permanent settlements and Residential schools. Starved for their social and spiritual customs, Mentasti photographs a former shell of what the Inuit people once were. Many of her photographs reflect a display of alcoholism and obesity, which are leading causes for domestic violence and unemployment. She reflects on this journey by calling these outcomes, "symptoms of a society that is floating between its past and present." Her lens captures an eery juxtaposition of hazy 'natural' skies and piercing man-made light, such as the headlights of their rusty trucks or the singular light fixtures marking the doors to the small beaten up shacks they occupy.
 * Gaza (2014)

"Gaza (2014)," is a project inspired by the uprising and eventual displacement of 520,000 Palestinian people in an effort to resist the radical Islamist group Hamas. Mantasti photographed the events that occurred over 7 weeks and the most resounding photos depict crowds of angry civilians gathered in the streets, or what is left of them peaking out of the rubble. There are particularly disturbing scenes which show disheveled civilians either bleeding or openly weeping; some of which appear disoriented and completely alone. This exploration closely relates to Mentasti's special interest in the increasing number of drone strikes occurring across the Gaza Strip. Accompanied by Daniel Tepper, she traveled with the Israeli military photographing behind the scenes glimpses of drone factories. Her images of the uneasy military presence lurking in the shadows clings to every weapon and manufacturing line she photographed. Mentasti captures the frustration and devastation of the Palestinian people by examining the lines between war and peace, and reminding the public never to forget our humanity.

Exhibitions

2016 Photoville, Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York City, USA

2016 The Future Perfect, ICP, New York City, USA

2016 On New Italian Contemporary Photography, VIASATERNA Gallery, Milan, Italy

2015 Royal Photographic Society International Print Exhibition – Royal Albert Hall, London, UK + touring venues

2015 Collective Exhibition, Delhi Photo Festival, India

2015 Fotofilmic'15, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, New York City, USA

2014 Top 30 Under 30, The Photography Show with Magnum, The NEC, Birmingham, Great Britain

2012 My Truth, Your Truth, Rita K. Hillman Education Gallery, ICP, New York City, USA

Online Features

Israel-Palestine: la guerre des drones, Le Monde Magazine, March 2017

Fantom Edition interview, Italy, September 2016

La resa degli Inuit, Io Donna, Italy, March 2016

Dead Sea, Vogue Italia, February 2016

Discover How Drones Are Made, TIME Magazine, US October 2015

The Powers of the Dead Sea, The New Yorker Photobooth, US, December 2014

In or out by air: the Inuit of Nunavut, The New Yorker Photobooth, US, December 2013

A woman with two Names, Conscientious Magazine, Germany, September 2013

For god and for gold, photographs from Atlantic City, The New Yorker Photo Booth, US August 2012

Vittoria Mentasti: Turin, Italy, Fotofilmic, Italy, June 2015

Scholarly Work

Awards

2017 lacritique.org Award, Voies Off Arles, France

2014 Winner, Top 30 Under 30, The Photography Show with Magnum, Great Britain

2014 Scholarship, YART Photography Workshop in St. Petersburg, Russia

2013 Finalist, Photolucida Critical Mass, USA

2013 Honorable Mention, Magenta Foundation, Flash Forward Emerging Photographer, USA

2013 Chosen Winner, American Photography 29, USA

2012 ICP Director's Fellowship, USA

2012 Reflection's Masterclass Nominee, Italy

Website

www.vittoriamentasti.com

Bibliography