Birth act

This work is a long-term visual narrative about the human experience of growth and development through the non-biological parenthood in adoption. I believe that acknowledging adoption is often not a quick or easy thing to do, which is why many adopted people tend to hide, cover up or, more drastically, forget about their birth act. However, it can also be a story of love and empathy, of strength and determination, which over time becomes a space for imagination and creativity, and this is my story that I like to express through photography. In different environments I search for the visualisation of a living being that finds life on a different ground from that of its birth, a fertile space that as such offers conditions of prosperity and beauty. I found out that this space is the familiar and the domestic, where the cultivation of a relationship plays an important role in the shape of its components. In order to tell this story, I observe the world of plants, from their aesthetic to their growth methods and roles, in different domestic environments of the territory where I live, South Tyrol, Northern Italy. My aim is to create a language that allows people to empathise with the plant as a body: its biology, the contexts in which it is placed, its process of cultivation, the personal meaning given to it by humans, its possibility of generating another life. From the Treccani Italian Dictionary (English translation): "TO CULTIVATE means to take care of a piece of land or a plant in order to make it capable of bearing fruit, through work, fertilisation and other appropriate means [...] Figuratively speaking, one can cultivate an activity, a passion, and it means to devote oneself to it, to exercise it [...] or one can cultivate a relationship, and it means to keep it close and strong.” The world of plant cultivation is therefore the key of this work, which speaks about relationships and living beings, about nature and humans and about the massive importance of protecting life.