Cristina Cenciarelli (born 1954) is an Italian photographer who lives and works on the island of Boipeba in Brazil. Here, alongside her commissioned work for designers and magazines, she is creating a photographic and audio archive of the memories and traditions of the senior islanders. The Memory of Boipeba project seeks to record a culture and an outlook that is not compatible with urban modernity, and as such, is threatened by it.
Cristina trained in Advertising Photography at the European Design Institute in Rome, which led to widely published work in advertising, theatre, cinema and reportage in Europe and the US. Her move to Boipeba caused her to reassess her photographic practice. She says, "for the first time I started to take pictures of people who were not models, celebrities or actors - people who had turned image into their life condition - but simply people. People who don't even have a mirror at home. People who have to be treated with dignity as individuals and not turned into romanticised types."
In her portraits, Cristina is constantly seeking an image that is respectful, but also authentic and unstyled. The sensuous texture of light unites Cristina's abstract and portrait work. In both strands of her practice, she concentrates on three aspects of the photographic process: emotion, achieved through both the moment and the subject to be captured, light and composition.
Cristina eschews questions of technique, speaking instead of the importance of timing and emotion. She feels her approach to her work is embodied by Cartier-Bresson's definition of photography, which he said is about, "bringing one's head, one's eye and one's heart in the same line of aim." For Cristina, the right moment is when all three meet.
EXHIBITIONS
São Paulo: um caso de amor, 450 pontos de vista , an exhibition celebrating the city's 450th birthday
Europa - America, 60 e-venti" and "Ex-plorando", Molica Gallery, Rome & New York
Donna e Arte and Carta x Carta, 70 Female European Artists, with the Das Verbogene Museum of Berlin and Austrian Cultural Institute of Rome
La nostra impronta, a study of worker´s hands in collaboration with the Fiumicino City Hall , Maccarese Castle, Gino Pallotta Library
Neon City, exposition of New York neon reportage, Tulipiano Gallery, Rome
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