We are all in motion, a constant migration, inevitable.

It is the human condition. Whatever is still is dead.

Everything circulates, has its cycle, its beginning and end, and then begins again. A vortex in which everything is mixed, where to be hybrid is the only possible form. We can’t be anchored to a fixed identity, however much it might be part of our own history, which must not be forgotten. To live is to move, to change, to migrate, inside and outside of our selves. It is our punishment because it hurts, but there is no other way to live and to be alive.
Always we leave traces of our passing.
We build houses, cities, erect monuments, places of worship. We take photographs, write books, paint pictures. We have children. We try to control nature, animals, people. We do it to make this life eternal, something it cannot be. Everything is impermanent, everything that happens and that we know has already passed, is no longer here today or will not be here tomorrow.
We have no choice, we do it in order to quell that sense of inner loneliness that accompanies us throughout our lives. We do it every day, with the little things that surround us, aware or unaware we leave traces of our passing in every place. Patrizia Casamirra 2009

The project involves the creation of reportage stories from a number of different countries, showing women who have lived through war. The idea is to choose those women who have played a significant role in each country and to gather together their unmediated personal testimonies.

The black and white portraits show the women in their homes or in circumstances that illustrate the lives they now lead.

Particular attention has been given to those women who have undergone violence or imprisonment, or who are actively engaged in the defense of civil liberties.

The countries have symbolic value; they have been carefully chosen to represent all the women in the world who, in their different cultural and religious contexts, live and work for peace, justice and cooperation.

The countries are: Argentina, Guatemala, Bosnia, Palestine, Rwanda.

The focus of my work is women and the lives they lead. The only way to fully understand their energy and their strength is to actually experience the context in which they live.I’m interested in bringing to the light the value of solidarity among spontaneous groups, the relationships between individual women who work daily to organize assistance, support and the resumption of lives that must continue. I’m not interested in analyzing the multinational organizations that benefit from quantifiable resources and backing.Photographing these women today is one way of reclaiming lost gazes, echoes of ancient civilizations and a past that may be suppressed, complex reflections on the value of existence, exemplary stories of the struggle for survival, justice, truth and peace.