Delta
Camilla de Maffei
2014 – 2021 — Danube Delta
About this series
Marshy, rugged, monumental.
The Danube Delta is Europe’s largest estuary, a natural labyrinth of water and reeds covering some 3,500 km2. Located at the most peripheral point of the EU, between Romania and Ukraine, it is the place where Europe physically ends, sinking into the Black Sea.
The delta region is sparsely populated and lacks basic infrastructure. The few villages scattered across the territory can only be reached by boat and sink into darkness as soon as the sun goes down. Living in the Delta means living in symbiosis with the landscape and its changes; like minotaurs, the inhabitants live immersed in this labyrinth, enduring the emptiness it imposes.
I spent five years immersed in the bowels of the Delta to document the deep bond between this wild territory and its inhabitants. I observed the landscape and its slow mutation to experience how the regular and inevitable rhythm of the seasons influences moods and habits, conditions people’s desires and establishes physical and mental barriers.
During this long research process, the marshes’ physical reality gradually lost consistency, acquiring the psychological character of an actual labyrinth.
Through a photographic record that intentionally fluctuates between anthropological observation and symbolic transfiguration, I have drawn my own map of the territory: an interpretation that interrogates the landscape and explores the deep meaning of the act of Inhabiting. Inhabiting a territory, a labyrinth, themselves.
Photographer: Camilla de Maffei
Nationality: Italian
Based in: Italy – Spain
Website: camillademaffei.com
Instagram: @camilla_demaffei
Camilla de Maffei is a photographer based in Milan (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain).
Her photographic research is based on long-term involvement, on exploring narrative possibilities generated by the relationship between image and text, and on using a hybrid photographic register, which oscillates between anthropological observation and symbolic transfiguration.
Since 2009, she has concentrated her production in the Balkan area, driven by the need to “observe Europe” from a different point of view, that is, from what we superficially consider “its margins”. Focusing on a specific place as a starting point, she has developed several projects that delve into and question the relationship between territory, landscape, identity, memory and geopolitics.
Her work has been exhibited in national and international galleries, institutions and festivals such as Fotografia Europea (Italy, Reggio Emilia 2023), Les Buotogrpahies Festival (France, Montpellier 2023), Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation (November 2023), Sa Nostra Foundation (Parma de Mallorca, Spain 2022), Palazzo Massari (Italy, Ferrara 2018), The Half King Gallery (USA, New York 2016), among others.
Her project Delta( 2014-2021), won the Mallorca Prize for Contemporary Photography (202) and became a book published by Ediciones Anómalas (2022). Delta has been shortlisted for the Photobook Award at Les Rencontres de la Photographie de Arles (2023), Marco Bastianelli prize for the best book of the year (2023), Urbanistica Institute Award (2022), I-Star Book Award (2021).
The Great Father (2018-2023), her project realized in Albania, is the winning project of Fotografia Europea 2023 and of the Bup Book Award 2023.
In 2011, in collaboration with the photographer Eugeni Gay Marin, she founded El Observatorio, a space devoted to photographic creation, specializing in visual narrative.