Chiara Glionna: the interview for HumanWonder by Flaminia Mineo
FM: How did you approach photography and why is this the means to express yourself?
CG: I approached photography when I was very young, I remember the first SLR that my parents gave me when I was in middle school. I took lots of photos and above all I liked to make up and dress my friends and spend afternoons taking pictures. In the adolescent period I stopped believing it wasn’t for me until then I found myself at the university having to take an exam focused precisely on photography and it was there that, taking the camera in my hand, I realized I wanted to do just that in life.
I think it is the means by which I can best express myself because it is the only thing that makes me able to express my idea 100% without being misunderstood or not understood. Clearly I can’t expect to be appreciated and understood by everyone but it certainly makes me able to get closer to the greatest number of people and therefore share my creativity and my inner world with the outer one in the clearest and most effective way possible.
FM: What is Fragility for you?
CG: Fragility for me is one of the most important characteristics that a man or woman can have together with sensitivity. Fragility allows you to gently enter into the lives of others because in the first place you have been broken numerous times by hands that did not know how to touch you. Being fragile is not a weakness of character, on the contrary, I have always perceived it as added value, a surplus that allows you to see beyond words. Being fragile makes you grow and fortify, makes you build walls but also makes you destroy them at the first hint of spring. Because you are fragile, you know it, but you got up so many times that you are not afraid of anything because when your fragility no longer frightens you then you are invincible.
FM: Your project has affected us intensely. “The fragility of flowers”. Was this project born of a need? Tell us.
CG: The photographic project ‘Body shaming’ and the video interview of the backstage directed by Giulia Lotorto gave me the opportunity to express my primary need, namely to destroy any patriarchal and male chauvinist ideal that closes women in a box. I wanted to see if there were women available to get naked for a common ideal because nudity invented nature because it still scandalized so much in front of all this perfection of volumes and colors?
FM: How do you feel when faced with fragility? A moment of your fragility?
CG: Faced with fragility, I become compassionate. I am very sensitive and when I see someone fragile within a group or on some other occasion I do everything I can to feel strong and sure of himself, accept his fragility and react to the wickedness of the world with audacity. I describe my Instagram profile as ‘the garden of fragile things’ because in every photo I try to bring out the fragility of each person in front of me and turn it into strength. We are all fragile only if we hide it more or less in depth.
FM: What relationship do you establish with whom you are facing?
CG: I am an empathic person so I feel a bit the energy of those in front of me and I can understand how to behave accordingly. I always tend to play down and create a peaceful atmosphere in order to be able to live together as quietly as possible.
At work I try to create a relationship of trust also because seeing a goal pointed in front of my face can often put me in awe and to be able to achieve my goal I have to make the person in front of me feel free and at ease and open me the door of his inner world. Finally, I always try to be kind, I think being kind is fundamental to be able to change things. In a world that continually wants us to be in conflict, being kind is an act of rebellion.
FM: Why are you a fashion photographer? What do you like about fashion? How do you perceive it?
CG: I decided to approach fashion photography because it is the union of the two things that I am most passionate about and that above all make me goosebumps. Seeing fashion shows that have changed fashion, iconic shoots, reading articles or studying their history excites me incredibly. Although fashion is a difficult, closed and very competitive field, I think it is the strongest means of communication. Fashion is part of anyone’s life, fashion decides what you will wear and how you will behave even if you think you are out of it and cannot touch you.
Many times I happened to talk about fashion with people who were not part of the field and as a source of pride they brought arguments such as the models of the clothes they wore belonging to past seasons without knowing that they would also have been from past seasons but behind that pants, jacket t shirt etc. there was an incredible story that in a specific historical period revolutionized the life of some people.
