Costanza

The project tells the story of Costanza Lorenzetti, a woman who defied fascist conventions and elevated photography as a critical and educational tool, leaving a silent yet decisive mark on Italian art history and women’s emancipation.

This project is inspired by Costanza Lorenzetti, a pioneer of women’s emancipation and the first woman to hold a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples in 1921. At a time when fascism enforced strict gender roles, she chose study and teaching over the domestic sphere, and she was the first to use photography as an educational and analytical tool in art history.

Through the family archive I inherited, I reconstruct fragments of her practice and her time. The images show the silent influence of a woman who changed the way art was taught, while remaining largely unknown. This visual research allows me to engage with her legacy, reflect on my own family history, and rediscover the contemporary relevance of her independence.