Honorable Mention

The Flower of Youth
DESCRIPTION
This portrait celebrates youth as a stage of silent and luminous blossoming.The young face, bathed in soft light and wrapped in floral hues, symbolizes an age suspended between discovery and possibility. The blurred petals and pastel shades surrounding it almost seem to emerge from within, as if the person were truly blossoming, at the height of their existential flourishing: a visual representation of youth as a stage of silent expansion, rich in possibilities. It is a metaphor for life budding, for time blossoming without yet knowing its final form.
A photograph that portrays not just a face, but a unique moment of growth and inner beauty. The gaze is neither childish nor adult: it is a suspended moment, typical of youth: a blend of vulnerability, dream, and an identity under construction. The shallow depth of field, leaving the outline blurred, symbolizes how the world around the subject is still undefined, in flux.
AUTHOR
Born in Sicily in 1974. She graduated in Psychology in Rome and specialized in psychotherapy and phototherapy. Her passion for photography began when she was a child thanks to her father who loved to portray her often. She began with landscapes, to arrive at Portraiture, a field in which she followed several workshops with Italian and international Masters, such as Giovanni Gastel and Mustafa Sabbagh. She specialized in Fashion Photography at the prestigious Kaverdash Academy in Milan.The projects she carries out move on the border between art and psychology. She is the author of two books: “Io non muoio” and “Noi siamo bellezza”, which are not simple collections of portraits: they are acts of love towards those who often feel invisible. They are emotional journeys where the gaze of the lens becomes a caress, testimony, truth.
With a conceptual language, she is also working on a series of photographic projects aimed at giving shape and face to complex issues such as mental distress, anxiety, depression, dissociation, eating disorders, trauma. Each shot is born from a process of listening and sharing, often in collaboration with the subjects themselves, who become co-authors of the images.
In a world where mental health is still somewhat of a taboo, he believes that art must take on the responsibility of completely breaking the silence. His images aim to be tools of awareness, vehicles of empathy, bridges between those who experience discomfort and those who often fail to understand it.