Tough Skin and Tender Moments: Mysticism and Womanhood in Viviana Bonura’s Photography
When I received Born from Salt, it was mid-June, and the package had traveled halfway across the world to get to me, from Tokyo to Rome to Prague. Before receiving it, I had briefly explored Viviana’s Instagram and seen her work contoured by her username, likes, and comments. While her profile reflects her portfolio, the book presented me with something else: Born from Salt possesses something incredibly more profound and intimate, furrowed in mysticism and philosophy.
Almost two weeks later, on a Sunday, I finally interviewed Viviana. As we shyly introduced ourselves and skimmed through the pleasantries, I sketched her in my mind; she had pink streaks in her hair and a tang in her voice that made me nostalgic.
In our interview, she spoke to me about tough skin and bodies, vulnerability, and womanhood—elements that constitute the essence of this young and brilliant photographer’s journey through her homeland. This work is drenched in the water of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which wets the shores of Palermo. She spoke of magic and superstition, of religion and the hold it has, especially in southern Italy. Just as her descriptions brought to mind pictures of Visconti’s "Gattopardo" and the glorification and admonishment of women in Tornatore’s "Malena," she told me of the importance of focus, of how crucial it is to be vigilant and aware even in a sea of uncertainty; one must always remain conscious.
By the time the interview ended, I felt as if I had woken from a dream—a dream made of Woodman, Sicily, magic, and skin. Viviana is an artist who searches for things thought lost and does so with care, conviction, and depth that is entrancing.
And with that, let the interview begin…
Interview with Viviana Bonura
Martina Cantore (MC) — What made you want to be a photographer, why is this your chosen form of expression?
Viviana Bonura (VB): I think this is the hardest question to answer: I didn’t think - it was a very spontaneous choice. In my life, it was one of the few choices I made without analyzing it too much. So, retrospectively, it’s more difficult to answer. But I was very young: I remember asking for a camera for my communion. There was evidently something [in photography] that entranced me. It was spontaneous. I felt like I deserved this thing that allowed me to see myself, to recognise myself. I recognised myself in the photographic medium because it was something that was always there in my childhood: My father took pictures. It was a way of understanding him and something which I eventually used to understand myself.
MC — As a photographer, and the subject of self-portraits: Is the body just a body? [Does the body change from one side of the camera to another? Is the camera an extension of the hand? Is the body, on the other side] just flesh and bone? Or is it a container? A temple? An amusement park?
VB: In the end, the body is the only thing we, as human beings, have in order to experience the world. The body is the middle man between us (what we are) and the exterior world. It is not only a body in the sense that, oftentimes, in society, especially as women, it is perhaps too important, we cannot seem to exist in public spaces just as bodies. We are always hyper-conscious of ourselves and the way in which we appear. Sometimes I just feel like saying: “It’s just a body, a body like any other,” I would like to be in control of it, to exist without these pressures - but I guess, at least today, it can’t be like this, as much as I would want it to be. The body is not only a body - it is, and it can be, a political instrument. The most important way it can do this, for me, is through art, because it’s what I do. I find it really important to document the changes of the body, to play with it, because in the end, if we can do something, to take back control it is also through play. Our body is a beautiful instrument, you can play, you can transform, you can play dress up…
MC — How do you reconcile photography and philosophy in your work?
VB: So… I think philosophy is really important, we seem to be so focussed on completely different things on our day to day that it may seem obsolete. It’s important to stop and reflect. I think the way in which I reconcile everything is by uniting philosophy to a political dimension as much as I can. I try to always be aware, have a focussed, active gaze, not forget what (and why) I'm doing what I’m doing - even in the moments of most spontaneous creation, like when I shoot. I trust myself. I always try to keep my eyes open, always try to be conscious.
MC — How does the absence of color figure in Born from Salt?
VB: I’ve (almost) always photographed in black and white. Surely there’s a very practical component to this choice - in the sense that managing color is much more difficult than working with black and white, even though some people would disagree. I’ve always worked better like this. Even with the choice of film over digital - though Born from Salt was shot digitally.
I work with black and white mainly because I want to do a subtraction operation - sometimes color can distract. By not using color I want to make things more immediate, and more direct, I think it’s the best way to present work that is conceptually very complex. I didn’t want to add complexity over complexities and layers on layers. In reality, I want to be very conceptual but also very direct on a corporeal level. I want to evoke certain feelings, that, on a visual level, I feel, would hit faster and harder if color were absent.
MC — In the description of this book you mention identity and over-structures: As far as over-structures go, when you’re born there are a couple that are pretty concrete: sex and nationality. Which has influenced your work the most? Is it being Italian, with the ever-present religious anxiety? Is it being a woman, with the objectification and sexualization it often entails?
VB: It’s everything… Together. It has to be. Our contaminations, our influences, all intertwined, create, by force of things, a complicated web to untangle. It has surely been influential being a woman, the type of family I've had has influenced me, the place, geographically, where I was born, influenced me, a whole series of environmental factors. It happens to all of us.
I started this project in 2020, so it’s already pretty distant in time, even emotionally, for me, and it’s nice to return to it because I discover new meanings: But if I think of the me from four years ago and how much I could have been aware of this intersectionality, I don’t know if I was. It was something which came later, which I also learned from doing the work. Looking at the images and sharing them with others. The moment I shared this work was fundamental because I received some feedback which made me realize that what I did may have another dimension with respect to the one I had thought of initially. Initially I just thought: “This is very intimate work, it’s very personal” and then I thought about its collective dimension. A lot of people, women especially, here in Italy and in the south in particular, have come to me telling me they recognised themselves in this work of mine. I thought: “Okay, what do they mean? What do we have in common?” - probably in our experience as women, southern Italian women, in a culture which is surely very drenched in certain stereotypes, certain convictions about life and how to present yourself.
But In the end, after a few years, I realized, very instinctively, that the element which connects it all is that little bit of chimerical, that magic which I always cared for. I’m a big fan of dreams, of the surreal and all which is dreamlike. Magic is also very important when it comes to superstition, it’s something still very much alive in the south, in Sicily, especially in the more rural areas. And it’s something which, there, intertwines with religion, so, in reality, it becomes a personal version of religion and spirituality. Magic is also something which when tied to women, elevates them, iconizes them and stigmatizes and emancipates them at the same time. It was deeper than I thought; this irrational, infantile thing which is magic.
MC — What have you learned about yourself and/or about photography while working on this book?
VB: I’ve learned so much. Till today this has been the project of my life. I care about it so much because, throughout the years, looking back at it, I’ve realized that it has taken on a shape of its own. It has given me so much because it taught me till what point I can push myself and where I should stop: The initial objective of Born from Salt, the one my 20 year old self had drawn up in 2020, was to rebuild, or better, toughen, my skin, because - and don’t get me wrong here, vulnerability is beautiful, but I felt a bad type of vulnerable. I felt vulnerable to some perceived external attacks, and relationships, for me, seemed difficult because I felt like people got under my skin too much. I recognise now this was also a result of how I was raised. So, growing up, and growing up with this project in particular, I learned how to inhabit this new, tougher skin. I feel like myself now, but since it was a delicate photographic process, sometimes I realize that I went too deep. It was trying even on a physical level. It is difficult to understand how much you can - or should - share about yourself; sometimes it’s too much. You have to find the right measurements, and I feel like I have. In fact, as of now, it’s been a while since I shot a self-portrait. But it’s okay. It's a process of growth. Maybe I just have to shoot something else.
MC — What is your relationship with film photography as someone who grew up with digital?
I think shooting analogue, as rare as it is for me now, is one of the few things which saved me from digital anxiety and the oversharing it encourages. This is because, when shooting film, there is, necessarily, this moment in which you have to keep something for yourself, you have to wait. So, my relationship with film, in a world which is reliant on the digital, is curative in a sense, because I recognise the need to distance myself and to not give in to this ever present performance anxiety. The digital is something which I don’t feel my own, it dissociates me from myself and dissociation has always been a constant in my life: As much as I try to work on it, with digital, it’s more difficult to do because everything becomes so immediate, it doesn’t allow me to get deeper. I always look for a way, a process to go deeper, so it’s not so much an aesthetic ambition, a look, the aspect or the format, for me film is a question of process.
MC — Can you give us a teaser regarding your future projects?
VB: I don’t know, I don’t know what to tell you because I myself don’t know what I’m doing. After Born from Salt I dedicated myself to other things, to more theoretical research, but also to shooting virtually nothing. There was that moment of perdition, like when you close an important chapter in your life and you don’t know where to go next, you don’t know what the next step is. Now I’m shooting whatever I feel like shooting, telling stories that are close to me, and slowly, I try and figure out what it all means; very naturally, very calmly, with the least anxiety possible.
If I really had to pinpoint something: I am very interested in talking about the difficulties there are in the creation of deep and significant relationships with other people. I’m also getting more interested in nature: I’m trying to shoot things other than people - things that are alive, but in a different way. I think mine is becoming a photography which is more and more minimalistic, there’s always less and less.
The work I have started doing after Born from Salt is much more conceptual and referential - I feel like Born from Salt lacked spatial and temporal references, and now I want to contextualize more in that sense.
MC — What advice would you give an artist trying to find inspiration for their first project?
In reality I’d give them the same advice I give myself, and which I’m stealing from a teacher who told me the same thing: Don’t think so much about the projects, those come afterwards, not all photographers work like that. To me even the whole format of the project is something which comes from the photography market, the art market and from socials - not everything has to become a project.
It’s the moment right before all that, the moment you shoot, which is sacred: It’s the moment in which we really learn something about ourselves, in which we’re really able to tell a story, somebody or something else’s story. You always have to remember why you’re doing something, and sometimes it has little to nothing to do with photography itself or with the aesthetics of photography, sometimes it has everything to do with the way in which we relate to ourselves, to each other and to the world.
So, my personal advice, would be to always work on yourself, to always keep your eyes open, then the rest will come.
VIVIANA BONURA
Author of Born From Salt
Favorite Songs
Overgrown — James Blake
Être — Nicholas Jaar
Horizon — Aldous Harding
Favorite Films
La Chimera — Alice Rohrwacher
Titane — Julia Ducournau
Columbus — Kogonada
Favorite Artists
Lucio Fontana
Todd Hido
Francesca Woodman
Born From Salt by Viviana Bonura is a captivating exploration of self-reconstruction and re-birth through artistic expression. Bonura's multi-media approach, combining visual and performative arts, delves into the desire for self-narration and reclaiming one's body. Through self-portraiture and performative methods, the project symbolically stages a reunion with the moment of birth, unraveling the origins of identity and societal constructs. Inspired by a dream where humans are born from salt, Bonura's work evokes themes of preservation, purification, and the expulsion of negativity, inviting readers to contemplate the profound depths of their own existence.