01 Photobook, 2026
Corpi senza volto
The female body between control and reclamation
A photobook with eight dancers, in five chapters. Bodies that don’t ask to be recognised, but to be seen.
Credits
Who tells the story of the female body, with what gaze, and with what intention?
Introduction
Corpi senza volto is not a project about absence. It is a project about presence: the kind of presence that is too often ignored, diminished, unacknowledged.
The women you will meet here have faces. They have identities. But in this project I am not asking you to recognise them: I am asking you to see them. To watch how they move, where they carry their weight, where they find their strength. To look for who they are not in their features, but in the way they occupy space, turn movement into language and the body into a voice.
Before every shot, each of them was read a series of questions. They were not to answer in words. They were to answer with their bodies. What you see is the result of those answers.
Five chapters, five moments. A path with no solution, but with a direction: towards a presence that does not ask permission to exist.
To anyone who, even for a single day,
felt wrong for being themselves.
Stylistic choices
01
Dance
A language before it is an aesthetic choice. The dancer’s body moves through control and discipline, finding in movement an authentic form of expression.
02
Photography
Crystallising the moment, stopping movement to train the gaze. The still image invites you to pause and recognise the body as a subject.
03
Black & white / colour
Two expressive possibilities, not two narrative moments. Black and white emphasises form, gesture and tension; colour gives back vitality and physical presence.
Creative process
Research
Dance and photography references gathered before the shoot.
Method
Before every shot, each dancer was read a series of questions. They had to answer with their bodies.
Location
Sala Prove Off, Teatro Golden, Rome.
Art direction
On set with photographer Luca Pegorer.
Chapter 01/05
Control
Who are you, when no one is watching?
And when everyone is?
There is always a gaze.
Even when you can’t see it.
Even when you think you’re alone.
There are rules no one says out loud.
But you learn them anyway.
How to stand.
How to move.
How to take up less space.
Your body has been trained.
Corrected.
Disciplined.
It has learned to hold itself back.
Not to exceed.
Not to disturb.
Chapter 02/05
Instability
How many times have you felt watched?
How many times judged?
Not for what you do.
But for who you are.
How many times have you felt belittled?
And how many times were you made to feel less?
Without a raised voice.
Without a word.
Just making sure you understood.
How many times did you adapt?
You changed a gesture.
Lowered your eyes.
Held back a movement.
Without being able to say a thing.
Chapter 03/05
Reaction
Who does your body belong to?
To you? Or to whoever is watching?
There is a right shape.
A right way, and a line not to be crossed.
And if you cross it…
you become too much.
Too visible.
Too present.
Too much.
What if you stopped?
Correcting yourself.
Holding back.
Making yourself smaller.
How does a body move when it doesn’t ask for permission?
How does a body move when it no longer wants to please?
Chapter 04/05
Exposure
How does a body move when it refuses to be looked at?
Yet is exposed all the same.
Where do you feel the weight?
In your shoulders?
In your hands?
In your breath?
And where do you feel your strength?
Let your body answer.
Don’t look for the right shape
or to be seen the right way.
Being visible isn’t always a choice.
But it can become a stance.
Chapter 05/05
Breath
Let what remains come to the surface.
What was left unsaid. What found no room.
Not everything has to be composed. Not everything has to be corrected.
There is a moment when the body stops holding back.
And the breath changes.
It widens. It takes up space.
The body no longer asks for permission. It doesn’t shrink. It doesn’t correct itself.
It isn’t a rupture. It’s something subtler. A presence.
The body remains. Whole. Visible.
No longer adaptation. No longer reaction.
A choice.
If no one had ever told you how to be… how would you move?
