Melania Messina
photographer
Buenavista Photo
Palermo, PA, Italia
Born in Palermo (Italy) on 1959, she attained a high school diploma of classical studies in Italy.She moved to USA during the eighties, on 1988 she studied photography at the "School of Visual Arts" in New York. Since many years she has been engaged in a research of innovative visual codes, using color as form of expression while treating social issues. Afterwards she came back to Italy and moved to Milan, where she started to collaborate with the photo agency "MARKA" and "Photo Dossier" and the magazine "L’Etichetta" directed by Luigi Veronelli, while also working as assistant in studios of advertising photographers. In 1992 she moved to Sicily, where she actually lives and works, she treated themes as female immigration in Sicily from the South of the world, a series of portraits published , together with the reportage of Paola Agosti and Simona Calì Cocuzza, in a book with preface of Giovanna Calvenzi. In 2004 the International Museum of Women in San Francisco has selected her entry for the published anthology project, Imagining Ourselves, previewed in New York at the 49th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The anthology with a preface by Isabella Allende, focuses on the global female experience. In 2005 within the activities of the NGO: "Laboratorio Zen Insieme" she conceived and realized a project lasting two years, which experimented visual codes while treating social issues, she conducted her project with the teenagers living in one of the most run down suburb of Palermo. The result of the project aroused interest, and the third channel of RAI Italian public network, transmitted on air her reportage. Her images are published in national and international magazines as Liberation, D la Repubblica, il Venerdì, Antiquariato, Bell’Italia”, l’Espresso, Gioia, Gente, , Traveller’s UK, New York Time magazine, etc. Since 2010 she is member of BuenaVista photo, the first collective of freelance Italian photographers.
- Arts
- Editorial
- Environment
- Landscape
