Svetlana Tarasova: Italy. Immersion | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2025

She is traveling to Italy – a beautiful country where new impressions, meetings and acquaintances are awaiting her. “It smells like sunshine here” is printed on her ticket. That’s exactly what she needs; there are too few sunny days in Russia in the end of October.

Her first impressions of Italy are bright shop windows, busiest streets, stylish Italian women, a lot of motorcycles parked along narrow sidewalks. Italy under the clear skies, Italy with stone pines, fashionable Italy with many tourists and wine tasting festivals. Foggy Italy with vineyards to the horizon.

Gradually, the exaltation from the first impressions is replaced by a tranquil joy from the sights of ancient architecture, monuments and frescoes under the open skies. She listens to Bach at an evening mass that continues playing in her head when she is returning home late along wet cobblestones glistening in the autumn rain. The city is not asleep yet, it’s a perfect time for a stroll. Umbrellas like butterflies are fluttering in lantern lights, lovers are kissing unabashedly at café tables. It’s still warm enough to sip some spritz outdoors.

She spends a lot of time exploring the city and begin to get used to the celebration that she encounters every day in the streets. Behind the external hustle and bustle, she is seeing another Italy – wistful and often rainy, since it’s almost winter. Now they are on the same wavelength, they share her melancholy, which never fails to come back to her as soon as the feeling of novelty subsides. She is no longer looking for its cause; she is used to that longing that rises from somewhere deep inside her. She sees it in the faces of people, in the gray sky, in the muddy waters of the Adige river churning under the Ponte Pietra.

Someday, she’ll believe again that there’s no reason to be sad. Someday, her former lightheartedness will come back to her. In the meantime, after finishing her latte macchiato, she goes on wandering without purpose or plan in the rainy streets. She observes the signs of modernity or, on the contrary, gets lost in time, traveling many years back, and plays with the scenery of the old walls to create her own stories.

The photos are made during the trip of Svetlana Tarasova to Italy mostly in Verona and suburbs, also in Venice, Rome, Brescia and Milan in 2016 and 2018.

Svetlana Tarasova is an art photographer. Originally from Kaluga, she works in the Central region of Russia, also has projects related to Italy, USA (North Carolina), Western and Southern parts of Russia. She is a member of the Russian Photo Artists Union.
The most important part of her professional activities is devoted to personal, longterm projects that are centered around an individual, his inner world, the conflict between dreams and reality. Refers to children’s memories and places associated with the history of her family.
Tarasova has been a winner of various competitions. She is a recipient of the PHODAR, Young photographers of Russia, PeterPhotoFest, The Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest, A. Yefremov Press Photo Contest, Samarsky Vzglyad, Faith. Love. Youth, Baltic Biannual Photo Contest; she has won scholarship from the Russian government for young photographers and scholarship of the Ministry of culture of the Russian Federation for talented authors; her works are included in the collections of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Chuvash State Art Museum in Cheboksary.

Website: http://svetlanatarasova.com

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