Sara Palmieri, Phenomena, 2022

Sara Palmieri’s PHENOMENA is a book that contracts time and redefines the space occupied by humanity in relation to nature, its scenarios of representation, imagination and control, breaking the boundaries of what is perceived real and allowing what is invisible to emerge. The work questions the hierarchies between humans and nature, discusses power relations, the manipulation of resources. Through a deep understanding of natural phenomena in relation to social ones, the photographer succeeds in constructing an allegory of nature’s creation. The volume proposes a thesis, and food for thought: why does man create fictitious images and atmospheres in an attempt to make nature a piece of furniture? Why does man not experience his relationship with nature and must filter it in order to tolerate it? The presented series, which brings together the artist’s discourse in a very broad way, has become an opportunity to reflect on these issues. Through the lens of the concept of control and its exercise, writer Beatrice La Tella then dialogued with the images to produce a text of great evocative power, a kind of chorus that resonates with the images.