photos © Carlotta Bertelli - all rights reserved
2021, published by Assouline
ANNA CLEVELAND _ I'M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU?
" [...] We’ve been together in the woods, in the water, in the wind. We’ve walked a lot
together, we’ve ran, we’ve danced.
We were nobody, we were everything. [...]" Carlotta Bertelli
PHOTOGRAPHY AS REVELATION
by Mariuccia Casadio
Resonances that capture us, touch us in our depths, awaken all of our feelings, for reasons that transcend even our own ability to understand.
Not ordinary events or common experiences, but special encounters, authentic revelations illuminating our existence.
Encounters with people and places from the world that surrounds us—people and places we can sense as they connect with us, mirror us, explain us. Other from us, yet speaking of us.
Resonances that are discoveries, enriching us, moving us and understandably filling us with enthusiasm. Experiences through which our gaze, our mind and soul can widen our awareness and knowledge. Experiences that fire our imagination, inspiring us with the most diverse ways to show, record and document what we are seeing, feeling and living through, all the better to etch it into our memory.
Yes, it is through the mystery of resonance, I believe, that we can best approach projects such as ‘Anna’s Book’—itself the harvest of astonishing encounters, empathies and harmonies. First and foremost the one linking Carlotta and her husband Gianluca with the spiritual ambiance of the natural hermitage that is Castiglioncello del Trinoro. Nestled in the secret, serene green of the Val d’Orcia a short distance from Fontevetriana, this is the place they have elected as their home, together with their little girl Francesca and their newborn son Simone. A medieval town brought back to its original beauty by Michael Cioffi, whose
Monteverdi Tuscany Experience has returned it to its former character: a warm, welcoming village standing next to the civilized world’ while remaining remote, almost unreal. A character immediately understood and appreciated by Carlotta, who has chosen to “speak it” with her camera through portraits of people, trees, flowers and other snapshots of nature, of pure beauty, authenticity and calm.
Hers is a close, deeply felt and deeply moving connection with the land, the enchanting, unspoilt world around her, through which she has created an unconscious introduction, an elective context for the genesis of “Anna’s Book”. A Rollei gallery of vibrant, delicate images taken with a gentle touch: “deeply felt photographs”, almost “like an amateur’s” in her own words—images in which Anna van Ravenstein sheds the garb of the successful fashion model and daughter of catwalk myth Pat Cleveland for the privilege of simply, authentically being herself.
Hers is also a choice resonating with the primal power of the context, while nonetheless subtending a search for freedom and the ability to relate with empathy and integrity to Carlotta’s way of being, of communicating, of taking photographs.
In their wish to abandon any needless constructs and transform their common project into an inner search, a journey into the authenticity of things and of their feelings, they have given life and images to a fortunate shared experience.
An augury of light and wonder, of spirituality and love for life.
A reportage against the grain.