Finalmente posso andare
By Janelle Lynch
Published by LensCulture
January 13, 2025
Finalmente posso andare (Finally I Can Go), an ongoing body of work by Italian photographer Cinzia Laliscia, began when she was revisiting her archive in late 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Laliscia was back in the Umbrian city of Spoleto at her parents’ home. A student at the European Institute of Design in Rome, she had returned there in March when the government ordered a lockdown. Soon after, her paternal grandmother and aunt passed away from causes unrelated to the virus. Laliscia was unable to attend their funerals.
“When I saw this picture, I thought, maybe I can try to move forward,” Laliscia says in reference to the photograph she named Finalmente posso andare. It is a black-and-white image of a young goat in motion. In the background, against a cinder block wall, a woman squats above hay. The frame is cropped below her shoulders. While her facial expression is not visible, her body language and relaxed hand gesture suggest she has just released the animal after a tender encounter. That emotional inference is augmented by the soft-contrast warm-toned filter that Laliscia subsequently created for the body of work in Photoshop.
Weighted with grief and with light as a guide, Laliscia selected other images from her archive that she had made during 2019 on and surrounding her maternal grandparents’ farm in nearby Lorena. It is a place of great personal significance to her. Since infancy, Laliscia has spent most weekends at her grandparents’ homes. On Saturdays, she and her family visited her paternal grandparents’ and on Sundays, they went to Loreno. That ritual and the experiences therein are at the essence of who she is today and her vision as a photographer.
When the lockdown ended, she continued photographing in Loreno. “There are more animals than people there,” she said. “And that’s a great thing. I like a lot of silence. I’m at peace there.” Laliscia’s pictures are quiet, indeed, and of a place that seems to exist in a realm not of this world but belonging to a parallel one in which the passage of time and the inevitabilities of life are absent. They recall the late Czech photographer Josef Sudek’s elegiac black-and-white still lifes of his studio window during World War II, and the American photographer Sally Mann’s reverential black-and-white images of her children. By deciding where to direct her lens, Laliscia is also asserting what is sacred. Like the baby bird cradled in two large gentle hands in The foundling, or the woman holding a bouquet of flowers in front of her chest in Mum.
While Laliscia shows the face of the aforementioned goat and bird, and those of the animals in Humanity, The unplanned encounter, and The loyal guardian, she chooses to exclude or hide the identity of her other subjects, including in Mum. What does this mean?
Across cultures and time, there are myths in which a being’s immortality or power is tied to the gaze. In Greek mythology, for example, Orpheus is allowed to bring Eurydice back from the underworld, but he must not look at her until they leave. When he does, she is lost forever. In another Greek myth, anyone who is seen by Medusa turns to stone. Likewise, in some religious traditions, gods or immortals cannot be seen without consequences. In Catholicism, the religion in which Laliscia was raised, the notion of anonymity or invisibility in relation to divinity reflects the belief in God’s transcendent nature. God’s essence cannot be fully grasped or directly seen by mortals because he is infinite and exists outside of the physical realm.
Could these ideas be behind Laliscia’s compositions of people in Lorena such as in the photography Auntie G? The picture shows a woman wearing a patterned sweater standing in bright light. Behind her are layers of hanging sheer fabric. Her head is covered by a hat and her eyes are hidden. The woman’s arm is raised at the precise angle so that it and her hand cast a dense shadow over most of her face.
Closer to life shows another figure with their identity obscured, standing within a domestic setting, perhaps a patio kitchen. An appliance anchors the frame on the left. Above it is a large tree and on the right are potted plants. In between them hangs translucent fabric imprinted with a shadow of a head and torso. Next to it stand legs above feet in sandals. The background is awash in natural light. A lamp fixture with a bare bulb hovers in the top right corner, as if on watch.
Laliscia makes one exception, however, in Grandpa B, an extreme closeup of a man’s face. She is as physically near to her subject as possible before losing the ability to focus her lens. We see the man’s mouth, nose, and evidence of age—lines, veins, gray hair. But we don’t see his eyes. They are shielded behind glare on his glasses. In a culture where family is prioritized, Laliscia is creating timeless—if not holy—images of a place and its inhabitants that, if she had her wish, would be eternally present. She is rendering them so inasmuch as possible through photography.
Even a squash holds this divine presence. The pumpkin is an image of a vegetable on a chair in front of a curtained window. The lines and shapes in the fabric reference those of the vegetable. The circular patterns on the curtains echo the small tomatoes that rest on top of the squash. There is as much reverence in this image as there is in any other image in the body of work.
Reverence is, in fact, another subject of Finalmente posso andare. We see it in Fiorella, an image of the skirt, stockinged legs, and shoes of what appears to be an elderly woman. In The hand, a photograph of a man’s arm and torso in an overcoat, his hand hidden in the pocket. From the fur on the fabric, it seems that he has just been in close contact with an animal. And we see it in Lucia, an image made from an elevated vantage point of the back of a young woman’s head, her hair elegantly knotted and graced by light. A friend of the photographer’s, the subject is seen outdoors in a sweater, with trees and perhaps garden tools in the background.
Sympathetic depictions of rural life is also the subject of the American photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti’s work in South America, which has been a reference for Laliscia. “From the first time I saw it, I fell in love with her intimate, poetic, delicate way of storytelling,” she told me. “I felt so close to her work, especially The Adventures of Guille and Belinda, that it became a fundamental inspiration.”
That inspiration is sensed in the work, but what is most palpable is the influence of the place, people, animals, culture, traditions, and values that have been an enduring presence in Lalicia’s life. In 2021, the photographer finished her degree in Rome and then returned to live in Spoleto with her family, an apt base from which she has continued Finalmente posso andare. Still a young photographer, she has much to learn, yet much to teach us.