Skin Project is certainly an act of denunciation of a hideous crime still too widespread in the Indian subcontinent (the acid attack), and in fact the girls portrayed were willing to show their faces to raise awareness in the viewer.
In fact, they want to be called survivors, not victims: the use of words is important, if we think that the goal of the perpetrator is precisely to force the victim to withdraw from life. Instead they survive, they go on, they bear witness. But Skin Project is also a magical space in which these women become beautiful, with bright clothes and colors, and their skin is flanked in a daring combination with the candid one of people suffering from albinism. Like scarred women, women with albinism are marginalized by Indian society: in Silvia Alessi’s artistic space they acquire dignity, beauty and strength.
About Silvia Alessi
Silvia Alessi was born in Bergamo, Italy in 1975. She has worked as a hairstylist and make up artist since she was 17. In 2004, while on a trip to Asia, she discovered an interest in reportage photography. She has since travelled extensively pursuing her passion for photography and “telling stories worthy of being told.”
Over the years with her growing experience, Silvia believes that she cannot define herself as a photographer, but rather an illustrator with a camera. She is not interested in photographic technique, but in creating artistic situations by conveying different people and their experiences in a single space together with her own disturbances and visions. Looking at her works you can perceive this approach: in Japan (Maze of Metamorphosis, 2019) she portrayed a butoh dancer with a hikikomori man, a geisha with a transgender dancer; in Iraq (Beyond the Line, 2018) she portrayed a gay boy with peshmerga female soldiers. In india (Skin Project, 2017) she portrayed acid-scarred women with people suffering from albinism. Behind her portraits there is always the true story and a sincere documentary interest, which is transfigured in the artistic vision, like a magical space where something new and unique happens.
Some of her works were published on Creative Image (India), Vredes Magazine (Netherlands), Fit For Fun (Germany), The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC World Service (UK) and exhibited in Berlin (Germany), Manila (The Philippines), Moscow (Russia), Milan, Bergamo, Verona, Sardinia (Italy), London (UK), Middlebury, Minneapolis (USA), Paris (France). [Official Website]