About 1180 miles of road traveled in the winter between 2019 and 2020. “It Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before” is a limited edition postcards box set that collects images and travel notes about America’s Southwest region: Nevada, Arizona and California.
Crossing places and atmospheres studied only on books and explored for the first time, the result is that of a circular journey, which leads the author to reflect on what we decide to see and then choose to tell, on the common thread that accompanies us. The fil rouge – a term that Goethe uses in The Elective Affinities – is that continuous line that connects the things of the world, people, what happened and what never happened. Made up of details, by nature it acts as a bonding agent: combining events, synesthesia, symbols, and between the case and chaos tends to infinity. For this reason, infinity is not abstraction but addition of events and life, between impermanence and continuous flow, between memory and future. It’s precisely this experience of fusion between memory, present and future, which forms a sort of link between experiences and places, as if that same road (or path) has already been followed.
Benedetta Ristori is a freelance photographer currently based in Italy. Her work is focused on the tension between a form and the space it takes and where it’s contained by. Daily objects or common landscapes are, for the artist, symbols of connection between interiority and materiality. The outside world is faced and represented through suspended atmospheres, bringing the viewer into a space less and timeless experience. Working in both staged and spontaneous photography, combining meticulously location, colors and composition, with a particular attention on subtraction and reduction to the essential.
In 2014 was mentioned by the magazine Vanity Fair in the Emerging Photographers section. In 2015 Benedetta was one of the finalists of the ‘Next Photographer Award’ by D&AD in partnership with Getty Images. In 2016 one photo of her project “Lay Off” was the winner of the People category in the 16th Smithsonian Magazine photo contest.. In 2015 she begin the series ‘East’ ended in 2018. In 2017 she was one of the 100 creative chosen to represent the Lazio region in the annual initiative “Lazio Creativo 2017”. In 2018 she self-published her first book “East”, from the homonymous series. In 2020 her project about quarantine in Rome is one of the winners of “Refocus” by MiBact in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Triennale Milano. Her works has been used to illustrate articles in Vice, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Label Magazine, Document Journal and others. She has worked commercially for clients like Airbnb, Fendi, Nike, Action Aid International. Her projects are exposed in various international exhibitions.
© text and pictures by Benedetta Ristori
You can buy “It feels like I’ve been here before” postcards here
