Covid-19 – A visual diary from Naples, Italy
2020
On 12.03.2020, Italy was declared a red zone in the Covid-19 emergency. Everyday life suddenly changed, the rules and freedoms we’re used to were frozen and nobody knew until when. People had to stay home, while doctors and nurses worked more than usual, in steady contact with the virus. My sister is an anaesthesiologist and I never felt so much fear for her work. This project is the diary I was keeping from the first day of Italy’s “Urgent measures for the containment and management of the epidemiological emergency from Covid-19”.
I started this diary at the beginning of the Italian national quarantine. I immediately felt the need to document somehow the unexpected experiences we had to live.
The project mixes media of all kinds: photos taken by me as well as taken by others; images I received daily via WhatsApp; video screenshots; images taken from the internet; personal artistic manipulations of them. I documented the enormous quantity of visual data I had to process and the effect they had on me. I looked at my feelings and my fears. I experimented with different languages, looking for a new photographic narrative.
Ludovica Bastianini (b 1986) graduated in History of Art and studied photography and the visual arts (NABA). She explores the cultural and social issues of society and is interested in the world of the mass media and the way they are influential in our lives. Her process involves both manual and digital work.
