Vanessa Monti – sometimes called Lafea, is a 23-year-old Colombian/Italian photographer and art director based in Barcelona. “The gifting of my nonna’s analogue camera when I was 18, the Voigtlander Bessamatic, has played a significant, inspiring role in my life. When I held it in my hands for the first time, this heavy and completely manual old camera, I knew I needed to patiently take the time to understand what is behind its lens. Urging me to intervene and get creative with the space, the objects and how they interact with the characters within the frame. Sometimes I feel like a documentarist of my own inner performance, which tends to resolve in an absurd and emotional touch.”
Her “Natural Couches” project is a photographic journey using a green couch to document a move into a new appartment and new life.
“All the words I could use to describe the tedium of that apartment ran out of existence. The sound of the train near the house shook the floor tiles making a soundtrack to the monotony of Asha and Melina. The walls of the apartment were getting narrower, so much so that taking out the sofa chairs through the door was only a part of a long process … a long beautiful process.” she explains. “While documenting the moving from that apartment to a better yet unknown place, I was surprised to witness Melina and Asha’s sudden change of mood as they were walking further and further away from the city. It is evident from the chronologic timeline of the photographs, how their facial expressions relaxed as much as their positions. They felt so free that they forgot what the function of a newspaper is, they felt so free that even if the straw gave them a skin allergy they could not avoid having it all over them. They walked through the city, along the railroad tracks, along the highways, through numerous fields, but no one remembers any of that anymore. At the end of it all, they decided to abandon their past life, clothes and beloved green couches, to finally get lost in a much larger and cozy green world.
Have you ever wondered, if when we walk, are we moving or just the space around us?”
