Un Mondo Propio (A World of One’s Own)
Elena Bianca Zagari
2024 — Naples, Italia
About this series
Un Mondo Proprio (A World Of One’s Own) is a photographic series that explores the lives of young women in Naples, investigating how they navigate identity, visibility, and autonomy within a city defined by historical, cultural, and social tensions. The work examines the intersections of religion, fashion, gender norms, and both public and private space, highlighting the ways in which women assert presence and agency within contexts shaped by patriarchal structures and enduring societal expectations.
The series captures intimate moments in bedrooms, bathrooms, clubs, and transitional nocturnal spaces, revealing the gestures, rituals, and forms of self-expression through which these women inhabit the city on their own terms. Fashion, makeup, and aesthetic choices are depicted not as decoration, but as tools for negotiation, empowerment, and reclamation of space. Through these acts, the women create alternative environments in which identity is asserted from within, rather than performed for the outside gaze.
By documenting both vulnerability and strength, Un Mondo Proprio engages with broader cultural and political questions about femininity, autonomy, and collective presence in contemporary Italy. The images speak to the ways young women reclaim their bodies, their visibility, and their stories, crafting worlds that are uniquely their own. In doing so, the project offers a powerful reflection on resilience, self-determination, and the continuous negotiation between societal expectations and personal freedom.
Photographer: Elena Bianca Zagari
Nationality: Italian
Based in: Naples, Italy – London, UK
Website: www.elenabiancazagari.com
Instagram: @elenabiancazagari
Elena Bianca Zagari (Naples, 2003) is an Italian photographer whose practice explores female identity, intimacy, and the spaces—both physical and symbolic—in which young women negotiate visibility, autonomy, and self-representation. Rooted in her upbringing in Naples, her work weaves together documentary observation and personal reflection, drawing on the cultural tensions that shape life in Southern Italy: spirituality and sensuality, tradition and rebellion, constraint and self-determination.
Her most recent project, Un Mondo Proprio, examines the lives of women in their twenties within the complex fabric of Naples’ nightlife and private interiors. Through a deeply relational approach, her work reveals the rituals, gestures, and emotional architectures that lie beneath public performance. One of the images from the series was selected by the National Portrait Gallery in London for the Taylor Wessing Photo Prize, earning the project significant international attention.
Zagari’s photographs have been featured by Photo Vogue, Nowness, WePresent, Inframe, Another, and various independent art platforms. Her work has also appeared in exhibitions across both institutional and emerging spaces. Guided by an interest in gender politics and visual culture, she uses photography as a tool to amplify narratives that are often marginalised or shaped by external gazes.
She lives and works between Naples and London.