The Colour of Ash
This series is a monochrome dream, a threshold opened in darkness. An inner place where losing oneself becomes a necessary act.
The images are crystallised in a timeless dimension. As in dreams, incongruity finds its own truth.
What emerges is a visual narrative that does not seek to explain, but to preserve a profound, intimate, irreducible emotional truth.
This book is a journey between story and myth, in which photography becomes a passage across time—an invitation to understand the essence of what has been and not to forget. It is not a historical reconstruction, but a narrative that privileges emotion.
The archival materials presented alongside the images and texts, are traces of lives suspended between reality and imagination. They help to reconstruct the context of the figures portrayed, amplify their resonance, and open onto a broader temporal and cultural depth. The black background is set against white, like the intimacy of memory opposed to the grandeur of history.
Postcards and representations restore authentic landscapes, monuments, lived-in places: they ground the vision in a concrete elsewhere, discreetly suggesting that this story truly happened. That this woman really walked those streets, even if time has tried to render her invisible.
Plastic both preserves and separates, like the thin line that divides memory from the void of a lost recollection. Fragments of what has been and of what might have been urge contemplation. Gold is not merely decoration, but a sign of fragility transformed into strength: an open wound, exposed. The images do not conceal pain; they reveal it. Each name is an identity that resists, refusing to fade.
Time may erase contours and swallow days, but it cannot extinguish the stories that still ask to be heard. The memory of these women — fragile and luminous — shines once more and lives on in the gaze of those who look.
Here an extract of the book
Elisa and the Enigma of the Labyrinth
On one side, the celebrated marble bust of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi — her gracefulness beautifully captured in its neoclassical pose by Antonio Canova. A regal profile sculpted for eternity, yet interrupted by a minimal, violent gesture. A band veils her gaze, transforming the powerful, cultured protagonist of her time, from icon to symbol of the systematic erasure of female presence from historical narratives.
Opposing, or perhaps mirroring this noble and silent face, is the mysterious visage carved at the heart of the labyrinth on the façade of Lucca’s Cathedral of San Martino. This worn stone face, consumed by time, is pulled from anonymity by the artist and repositioned at the centre of a visual inquiry.
Here, celebrated identity confronts erosion, obliterated legacies, and the absence of memory.
The Weight of the Mirror
In this diptych, a woman kneels upon a chequered floor, evoking the interior of a church. Her joined hands, caught between prayer and surrender, release glimmering mirrors—shards of reflection scattered like lost relics. The image is symbolic. These mirrors are truths no longer containable, identities which shatter when gazed upon by the observer.
Alongside, three overlapping Polaroids depict a minimal fragment of the façade of San Martino. Not the grandeur of the entire architecture, but a deconstructed detail.
Together, these two visions portray a wounded spirituality, a feminine identity poised between invocation and abandonment.
Out of a Dream
There is no death in there.
Only the fear of those who look at love
and cannot bear its beauty.
— out of a dream left unfinished by Lucrezia Buonvisi
The Gilded Silence
The figure of Lucrezia Buonvisi, a noblewoman of 16th-century Lucca, resurfaces as a fractured voice, a living memory just beneath the surface.
An image that returns Lucrezia to the sky, away from the convent’s dark chambers —without redemption.
This triptych is a visual requiem for what was stolen.
Lucrezia Buonvisi, condemned by history for love and escape, returns here as a symbol of all women silenced, imprisoned by roles, forgotten on the margins.
Let not silence become your prison.
Be voice, be choice, be freedom.
Silence
This is the place where pain takes shape. And you stand there, silent, before a truth that has no answers.
My name shines in the history of Lucca
She was guardian of a city, a reflected image of Paris,
yet chose the silence of night to withdraw,
freeing Lucca from the burden of an impending invasion.
A queen’s gesture, where renunciation became
the highest act of sovereignty and grace.
Icon of memory
The Polaroid, a fragile and precious keeper of suspended moments, framed by a thin leaf of gold, is not mere ornamentation but a reborn scar: a mark of existence reclaiming its place in time.
Elisa emerges as a vibrant presence, suspended between myth and reality, between the imperial aura of a French noblewoman and the tangible legacy of her deeds—like the Ducal Palace she envisioned as a mirror of Paris, a symbol of governance and vision.
The transparency of the envelope reveals a vintage postcard: a noblewoman in flamboyant attire, feathers and colours evoking an imperial dream, placed beside another postcard—depicting the Ducal Palace—an emblem of power and grandeur. Elisa’s imprint is unmistakable.
A narrative where past and present blur, and memory comes alive—restoring dignity to a feminine history woven from ambition, struggle, and resilience.
Stone guards what time tries to erase
Stone guards what time tries to erase.
The sea returned to her the wonder of herself,
and the sky offered her a place to dream.
Maria Luisa di Borbone, Duchessa di Lucca
A woman steeped in grace
Maria Luisa of Bourbon, Duchess of Lucca, lives again through an image that does not succumb to time but questions it.
The Polaroid, sealed with wax, becomes a contemporary relic. The handwritten inscription, partly faded and in Italian, entwines her life with a history that endures—even when its outlines blur.
The transparent envelope holds fragments of a past that remains vividly irretrievable. A fragile yet tenacious tool of memory transmission.
The stone of the monument does not celebrate; it bears witness to an era.
This work evokes a stratified feminine memory: political, public, private, and intimately veiled.
Maria Luisa appears as a figure steeped in power, grace, and silent suffering—caught between what remains and what time has tried, in vain, to erase.
Echo of an Immortal desire
Beauty that dared to defy time,
and was marked forever
by longing and the shadow of fate.
Lucida Mansi
Prisoner of an eternal longing
Lucida Mansi is a historical figure cloaked in mystery and tragedy—more legend than woman, more symbol than story. Her beauty, passed down in a tangle of myth and truth, becomes the fulcrum of a reflection on desire, vanity, and the condemnation of time.
A transparent envelope preserves the essence of a beauty unwilling to die. Images and a fragment of ivory silk. A remnant of a gown, caught in the folds of history—a textile memory evoking trade routes and the refined opulence of the Mansi family.
Timeworn silk becomes the emblem of what lingers: no longer the object of desire, but its afterglow.
In this diptych, beauty becomes absence — not celebration, but reflection. Not damnation, but testimony. Lucida Mansi emerges as a timeless icon, imprisoned by the thirst for eternity, marked by the pitiless fate of passing time.
Even in her tragic end, she lives on — and still captivates.
Damask
The Mansi family’s fabrics hold the breath of an era where opulence was woven into every thread, and vanity danced with eternity—silks from the East, golden brocades, and damasks as deep as the velvet of a private stage, each fold whispering secrets once breathed within the chambers of a vanished splendour.
Blooming in silence
If hope does not deceive me, soon will come the day when my memory will be joyful — and it comforts my heart
She still enchants
A luminous figure of Neoclassical Italy, Amarilli Etrusca—stage name of Teresa Bandettini—was far more than a poetic prodigy. She was a pioneer, a free and learned woman in a time when the world offered women little room to speak. Acclaimed dancer, inspired improviser, celebrated across Europe’s literary salons, she united the language of the body with that of the word.
A transparent envelope holds another image: Teresa in a dancer’s gown, seated with composure and grace. Behind her, a handwritten postcard: a trace of correspondence, of connection, of intellectual affinity. Here too, intimacy is the key. One must listen—to read in the signs the life that once was, and that still speaks to us.
This work evokes, preserves, and offers reparation.
Teresa Bandettini is no longer just a memory: she is a voice that endures, a gesture that still enchants.
Fragile yet incorruptible
An absence that continues to live like a breath held in.
Her own light
Ilaria, marked by grace and an untimely end — a wife and mother — rendered eternal in stone, yet as weightless as a thought resisting the passage of time. The instant photograph, fragile by nature, defies time and preserves remembrance.
In the diptych, a worn sheet of paper, yellowed by time and enclosed in a transparent sleeve, holds an image that conjures an intimate time, of motherhood and death, of life given and life taken. The body portrayed does not ask to be seen, yet speaks a story interrupted, awaiting completion.
Ilaria del Carretto died giving birth to her child, leaving behind love, mystery, and silence. Her tale, wrapped in legend, had slumbered beneath a veil of idealisation.
And yet, every day, women's hands brush the sculpted features of her face, as if searching — in marble — for hope.
This work is a gesture of love. A humble attempt to mend what time has torn. To return Ilaria to her own light.
Humility
Fragments of hope in a sleeping world
A private prayer
The image of Saint Zita is not merely iconic — it is a sign of transcendence born of humility. In her, the everyday gesture becomes prayer, and toil transforms into offering.
The small metal crosses applied to the surface recall medieval iconography and a militant spirituality. They do not merely evoke martyrdom but signal a path of feminine resistance — a faith embodied through the body, through service, through care. Gold becomes the halo of devotion. The handwritten word “humility” echoes a private prayer, intimate and radiant.
The two saints reflect each other: Saint Zita, servant and saint; Saint Gemma, virgin and stigmatic. Their destinies converge across the centuries in a holiness lived through smallest acts, in perseverance, in everyday choices.
Zita transforms labour into grace. In the gold that marks her and the crosses that pierce her, we glimpse the essence of an embodied spirituality. Her image — fragile yet powerful — restores a sacredness that lights the way and offers hope.
(io) My voice is gold
I carry with me the courage to speak what has been silenced,
to honour every woman who has resisted — and still resists.
It is not a self-portrait
I carry with me the courage to speak what has long been silenced — to honour every woman who has resisted, and who still resists.
The figure portrayed in this Polaroid is myself.
And yet, it is not a self-portrait.
Through this image, I become the voice of all those forgotten women — erased, silenced, unnamed. My figure gives shape to what no longer has a name.
My image carries the courage to speak what was suppressed — to honour every woman who has endured and still endures. The photograph becomes relic, record, fragile object and sacred artefact. An act of reclamation, of revelation.
The Installation in the church of Santa Caterina, Italy
Within the baroque chapel, The Colour of Ash takes shape as a site-specific installation meticulously conceived by Nicoletta Cerasomma, with conceptual rigour and formal balance. The suspended elements engage in dialogue with the verticality of the space, while the veil—a clear reference to violence against women—introduces both visual and symbolic tension. At the foot of the Madonna on her pedestal, the crystals placed on the photograph suggest a form of secular sanctity. The chapel’s weathered walls are not merely a backdrop, but an integral part of the work’s language, enhancing its evocative power.
Credits:
Hair Stylist & Mua: Antonio Porcelli
Models: Giulia Paltrinieri, Stefania Andarta De Piccoli, Serena, Elisabetta, Lisa, Giulia, Melissa, Matilde,
Text: Nicoletta Cerasomma
Conceptual fine art photography project exploring female identity, memory and trauma through mixed media and symbolic portraiture.
