Libera Mariotti, Hardcure, 2023

These pictures may be an invitation to my world, but they were taken so that I could see the

people in them. I sometimes don’t know how I feel about someone until I take his or her picture.

[…] I photograph directly from my life. These pictures come out of relationship, not observation.

Nan Golding, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

The title Hardcure was born from a wordplay between “hardcore” and “cure”, which came to the author’s mind while she was thinking about what to put on a t-shirt. She wanted to express her love for punk music and its lifestyle, as well as her anger towards everything she hated and couldn’t stand. But it was also a way to talk about her personal journey in dealing with this rage, and how it evolved within their circle of relationships, particularly within her little queer “family”. The combination of these two words, “hardcore” and “cure”, speaks to the idea that fighting against something is not just about opposition, but it’s also about creating something new, shiny, and arranged. It’s about the importance of supporting and being supported within a community and creating a safety net and a game of trust between individuals and their community.