Common Matter
“COMMON MATTER”, a photographic project by Sonia Fattori, explores the ancestral bond between humans and the natural environment. Using a combination of human portraits and natural landscapes, the project proposes a comparison between human and natural anatomy, highlighting what unites them.
The photographic focus is on the very essence of matter and surface: from skin marked by the sun to the grooves of time on faces and stone; from the lines of bodies to the geometry of the landscape; from the colors of fabrics to the shades of layered rocks, suggesting that individuals carry within themselves, in a tangible and visible way, the territory they inhabit.
The aim of the work is to highlight the deep connection between humans and nature, emphasizing how these two entities coexist and mutually influence each other, drawing attention to the need to rethink a relationship that risks becoming increasingly unnatural and disrespectful. Humans do not merely inhabit the land; they are part of it and, as such, must relate to it—at the cost of their own survival.
For the landscape images, the territory of the Province of Salta (Argentina) was chosen, where indigenous populations are working to resist the dominant predatory culture and to defend their identity, founded on a relationship with the land that is not economic but spiritual, communal, and vital, characterized by reciprocity and a deep respect for natural cycles.
The human faces and figures, instead, come from India (Rajasthan), the cradle of one of the richest, most ancient, and enduring cultures in human history, whose history seems to be imprinted on these faces, making them living testimony.
The harmony and commonality perceived in the juxtaposition of geographically distant places and people dissolve physical boundaries and suggest a path toward recognizing a single identity and a shared destiny of humanity, closely tied to the relationship it establishes and maintains with the environment. The resemblance between human geography and the landscape, as well as the effects of time and weathering on both humans and nature, evokes the idea of a “common matter,” and also of a shared matrix, so that the destiny of one becomes the destiny of the other, and nothing humans do to the environment fails to have repercussions on themselves as well.
The project also encourages us to lift our gaze from these images—of a simple, sometimes harsh, yet spontaneous and harmonious belonging—and turn it toward our own places, the environments of everyday life across almost all latitudes, to seek confirmation of the inseparable bond that human beings establish with them and the destiny they thereby write.
As land decreases and concrete increases, colors become less varied, rhythms less natural, food more processed and packaged… Across many fronts we witness a separation, a distancing, a loss of balance and well-being, but perhaps we still have the opportunity to reaffirm our common essence.
A project by Sonia Fattori, texts by Marta Daneluzzi
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