The artist
Italian photographer, born in Paris, Veronica Mecchia grew up in Milan where she studied art history and photography with Giuliana Traverso at the "Il Diaframma" Gallery in Milan.
In 2003, she returned to Paris where she continued her training in art history before devoting herself entirely to photography.
Her artistic filiation with the photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, whom she studied in Italy (1997/1998) and whom she considers her mentor, translates into an imperious propensity to maintain an organic link with nature.
Her black & white photographic work explores the relationship between man and his environment in a personal version. Through affirmed artistic choices: silver, self-portrait, black & white, nudity; she prints her state of mind and reveals a unique identity with universal character.
Inscribing herself in the ephemeral with poetry, as if absorbed by the beauty of things or places that move her, Veronica Mecchia incites us, through her photographs, to suspend time in a gentle contemplation and leaves us with a light heart, wanting, like her, to inhabit the world poetically.
Presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, her photographs and artist's books are present in private collections in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, United States, Switzerland and Japan.
His artist's book "Fotografie" (Paris, May 2016) as well as two of his photographs are part of the "anti-Aufklärung 2019" collection and are acquired by the Bibliothèque Kandinsky of the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).
In June and September 2023, Remèdes galerie dedicates to him, in Paris, a personal exhibition entitled Wild Flowers.
Nature is a temple
Originally it was Γαῖα (Gaia), the earth, mother earth. Arid, exploited, impoverished, it continues to generate life, a flower. Through this succession of photographs, we immerse ourselves in Veronica Mecchia's intimate world, which becomes earth, water, stone, sun, tree. Her gaze rests, without judgment and with humility, on the immensity of nature, which observes and welcomes her. These are moments, self-portraits of eternity, which shelter all the time that precedes and follows us, leaving us suspended in the only moment that counts, the present. It is here that everything becomes one, opposing forces reconciled, the majesty of the forest and its pillars revealed.
A piece of earth,
A sunflower,
A rock to seek
The illusion of shelter
An agave that flies away
Its destiny, imperturbable
A lake from which to re-emerge,
A tree to cling to
To rise again
An ancient thonaire
Its columns without capitals, without era
Reaching for the sky
Pillars become trees
The forest becomes a temple.
Distant words emerge:
"Nature is a temple where living pillars
sometimes let out confused words;
Man passes through forests of symbols
Who watch him with familiar eyes."
-Baudelaire-
Nature is a Temple is a series of nine self-portraits through which to discover the work of photographer Veronica Mecchia. Above all, it's about her personal journey. There is a 25-year gap between the first and the last photograph. We are faced with a birth, a discovery, an awareness of a relationship with the world that passes through astonishment, concern, contemplation and acceptance.
La nature est en temple is also a manifesto of the artist's work and her relationship with nature, which she shares with us and invites us to experience for ourselves. Veronica reveals the poetry of the world, of facing the world, of being with the world. This relationship is made up of moments, destined to pass, while leaving traces and words.
La nature est en temple is a call to the urgency of an intimate relationship with nature, its trees, its stones, its flowers, its waters, with the earth, Γαῖα.
Francesca Cominelli
May 28, 2023