Your name
Ilaria Sagaria
Place of birth
Campania, South Italy
Place where you live now
Milan, Italy
3 words to describe you
I am creative, empathic and a determined person
Why do you take pictures?
Emotions are very important to me and I need to translate into images what I feel to share them with others.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I get my inspiration from our inner world: I like exploring human feelings and emotions starting from an accurate study of the past and creating new scenarios and interpretations. The aim of my photography is to restore a complex and many-layered image of the interior world, rich in cultural symbols and artistic echoes, with a special focus on social and psychological meanings.
Who are your influences?
The History of Art and the Great Masters of the past have a big influence on my visual research. Before starting to photograph I painted and even today light and colours are very important for me.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
The subject matter is always something that excites me deeply. I started working on this series about adolescence, for example, when I started working as a teacher. Day by day I started to look at the youth with different eyes and to see for the first time all the magic and fragility it hides. I saw in these little women tender and dark creatures at the same time, like chrysalides walking towards something unknown, and so I started to photograph them.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I would like people to get emotional looking at my photos. In a world always faster, I hope someone can stop and reflect on some issues. This is the most important thing in my art for me.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Sincere artworks, which excite you and make you reflect on important things. The artworks in which you can find some solid research, not only aesthetic but also with conceptual content. I believe that if an artist or a photographer is honest with himself/herself and doesn't think only of profits and visibility, his/her truth also reaches others.
Is there anything you want to add?
I want to say thanks to all my students, they are the magic.

CHRYSALIDES
Project statement

In the world of insects the chrysalis represents the nymphal stage of butterflies who prepare to undergo a metamorphosis. Instead in psychology it becomes a symbol of the potential of being in the phases of its transformations: as the butterfly emerges at the end of a mysterious process of change, similarly human consciousness goes through various phases, enclosing a process and a story. Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis which had a symbolic value, like a message that has never been deciphered. This work, still ongoing, is an attempt to investigate adolescence as a history of being and of its change on more levels. In fact, adolescence is a phase of the life cycle in which a young person lives a delicate moment of development, not only externally but also internally and in which balances are always unstable. Images with a poetic vision of change, in which we find portraits of a psychological and intimate nature, are combined with images from the scientific-entomological repertoire, but also images of faded pages and words that underline the concept of impermanence in the difficult construction of the self. Inner and outer worlds are mixed in an attempt to decipher the mysterious riddle of adolescence.

ilaria sagaria
@ilariasagaria