Daria Martinoni — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Apr 21

Apr 21 Daria Martinoni

Biography

Daria Martinoni is a non-professional photographer working and living in Zurich, Switzerland. As a Geographer, she is interested in exploring our perception of space and reality. She experiments with long shutter speeds and several zoom settings or camera positions in one exposure. With this approach, she aimes at questioning our making of the world through experience and knowledge.
She has been awarded Honorable Mentions in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 International Photography Awards (@photoawards, @iphotoawards), in the 2019 ipa “OneShot: Street Photography” Awards (@photoawards, @iphotoawards), in the 2019 Budapest International Foto Awards (@budapestfotoawards, @ifotoawards), in the 2019 and 2020 Tokyo International Foto Awards (@ifotoawards), in the 2019 and 2020 Annual Photography Awards (@annualphotowards), in the 2020 Prix de la Photographie de Paris (@px3), and in the 2020 Chromatic Photography Awards (@chromaticawards). She has been accepted to the photoSCHWEIZ 19, 20 and 21, which is the largest photography exhibition in Switzerland, and to the XIIth edition of the Florence Biennale (www.florencebiennale.org, @FLRbiennale, @florencebiennale). After participating in various group exhibitions, her pictures were shown for the first time in a solo exhibition at the MyMicroGallery as part of the Photofestival Milano 2020 (www.mymicrogallery.com/en/2020/10/21/dariamartinoni).

Artist Statement

Vertigo is a notoriously ambiguous notion, oscillating between pleasure and anxiety, and inhabiting both our embodied and imagined worlds. Vertigo is not only related to the experience of great height. A range of factors – including movement, speed, and visual stimuli – create vertiginous sensations.
For this project, I exploit the geometry of the urban environment, and I play with perspectives and angles to create a sense of direction and an impression of depth and width. I work with the design element of reproduction, reiteration and repetition, and I experiment with long shutter speeds and several zoom settings or camera positions in one exposure. With this technique, I convey a sense of calmness in the chaos, and transfer the scene into a transitional world somewhere between reality and dream. With this approach, I hope to encouraging the viewer to see our surrounding environment with different senses and, as such, with a realigned horizon? With my work, I aime at questioning of the world through experience and knowledge.

What first prompted you to think of becoming an artist?

I have always known this sensation that, on closer inspection, the world around us is far less stable and far more chaotic than we generally assume. Emotions such as insecurity, uncertainty, confusion, but also longing and curiosity arise from this, senses that I process in my artistic work. In photography I have found a means to play with space and time and to express in images perceptions and sensations that I have never been able to describe in words.

What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?

As a visual artist driven by the desire to investigate reality with always curious eyes, whose work is grounded in pleasure, playfulness, and the wish to push her creative boundaries.

What are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?

In desisting from fixing things (in space and time), I encounter uncertainty as a source of understanding of how I am affected by the world around me. With my work, I am at questioning our making of the world through experience and knowledge.

Can you explain the process of creating your work?

For my photography, I exploit the geometry of the built urban environment, and I play with perspectives and angles to create a sense of direction and an impression of depth and width. I experiment with long shutter speeds and several zoom settings or camera positions in one exposure to express the paradox that the reality around us is chaotic and ever-changing while at the same time we perceive it as fairly permanent and stable.
I use the design elements of reproduction, reiteration and repetition to transform common scenes into geometric, abstract dimensions that produce new and unexpected perspectives.

What is your favourite part of the creative process?

Unlike in "conventional" digital photography, with my approach, I don't see immediately what I'm going to get. I very much like that uncertainty, the lack of total control over the process, if you will. I very much like the eager excitement, when I first see the result of a shooting session on the computer screen. I very much like the joyful anticipation of the image and the anxious question of whether the work has turned out well.

Can you give us an insight into current projects and inspiration, or what we can look forward to from you in the near future?

For my next project, I will leave the urban stage and go into a studio setting. You may look forward to a project that combines photography and computer graphics and deals with the different types of plastic and their respective recycling codes.

Website https://www.dariamartinoni.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_urban.sketches/