Gaia Squarci
Milan
Gaia Squarci is a photographer and cinematographer based in New York, contributor of Prospekt agency and Reuters. She studied Art History at University of Bologna and photojournalism at ICP, International Center of Photography. Gaia focuses on documentary issues, and her work leans toward a personal approach that moves away from the descriptive narrative tradition in documentary photography.
She attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2014, and in 2015 her installation Broken Screen has been selected for the exhibition reGeneration3 at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. POYi recognized her work as lead cinematographer for the the short documentary “Healing Bobby” with an award of excellence in 2014, and her photography project “My grandmother’s last months” won the same mention in 2017.
Her work appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, ABC, VICE, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Huck, PDN, CBSnews, De Spiegel, Internazionale, Marie Claire Italia, Io Donna, Sette, Il Corriere della Sera, Panorama, among others. Her photos and videos have been exhibited in the United States, Italy, France, Switzerland, Mexico, UK and China.
2014 - Award of Excellence at POYi 2014
- Arts
- Audio capture
- Corporate
- Crisis
- Editorial
- Entertainment
- Events
- Fashion
- Interview
- Medical
- Portrait
- Reporting
- RISC training
- Video capture
- Video editing
My grandmother's last months
Gaia Squarci
My grandmother's life and mine overlapped for 27 years. I always called her "Nonna."
Our age difference and profoundly contrasting values did not prevent us from developing a strong bond. At a lunch table a few months before her death in Milan, I learned from my mother, her daughter, that Nonna suffered from incurable liver cancer. Years before, she had already survived two bouts of breast cancer.
My grandmother was told her liver was sick, but no one ever mentioned the word “cancer”, as we were sure she would have not accepted to die of it, after fighting it twice. Because of this, one question haunted us until the day she died: Did we have the right to know the truth about her condition when she did not?
Nonna spent most of her last months surrounded by family. She reconciled with the idea of death. When she faced my lens sometimes completely naked, her body bearing the signs of past and present illnesses, she did not show the slightest bit of shame - only trust and pride.
The Living Queen
Gaia Squarci
Judith Malina founded the Living Theatre with her husband Julian Beck in 1947. The groundbreaking, political, experimental theatre group is currently the longest producing in the United States. Winner of four Obie Awards, the company hijacked the history of American theater in the 20th century, bringing the performances to streets and prisons, standing against the Vietnam War, the death penalty and any form of violence. Decades after their start Julian has long passed away, while 88-year-old Judith kept writing and directing until April 10th, 2015 when she died of respiratory distress caused by her emphysema. Judith was tiny, in her last years she looked frail from a distance, but from her little chair, tinted black hair and bright pink nails, she still had the demeanor and the following of a queen. Her main concern was to pass her message to the following generation, ensuring the survival of the Living Theatre and its values. The collective now goes forward in her memory.
