The bride of the sea

I was born in Italy, in a small Abruzzo town, in 1975. I worked many years as a sports journalist. Since 2014 I started studying photography and, since 2015 I started developing my personal projects.

- "The Bride of the Sea" is a part of long-term work about the last “brides of the water”, women who have decided to dedicate their lives to this natural element, the water. The project is still ongoing.

The Bride of the Sea

«I keep the fire low when I cook; I can have a look at the see from the balcony in the meantime». Anna Maria Verzino’s love for the sea is all in these few words. She was five when her father Donato, a lifelong fisherman from Casalbordino Lido, the small village in Abruzzo where Anna Maria was born 81 years ago (she will be 82 years old in January 2018), took her out to the open sea the first time.

Her love for the sea and for the time spent fishing has not limits.

She has fought to be a fisherwoman since she was a child; against her mother in the beginning, who wanted her to be a tailor, and then against the Italian law, that only gave her the license when she was 30.

Even nowadays Anna Maria, accompanied by Bruno, her brother, and Gloria, the boat, keeps ploughing the waves night after night.

Anna Maria has no doubts. «I wouldn’t change anything in my life; if I could go back, I’d do everything again exactly the same way» she says. The sea is life to her and her biggest fear is to wake up one morning and to realize that her health won’t allow her to go out on her boat anymore. «This is my sea, my life; I love him as if he were a person. Out there I am at peace as I’ve never been on land». Maybe it’s because of the strength of this love that everybody knows her as the Sea’s Bride.