Milk, Weight, Gravity
Milk, Weight, Gravity reconstructs a family narrative that hides and reveals, at the same time, ancestral psychological patterns. It recounts mental and psychological dynamics that have been silenced for decades and reappeared like ghosts in the author’s life, as the family albums did: a chaos of voices, faces, stories to listen to, to learn about, to investigate. The core theme is the legend of genetic depression in the family, highlighted by a series of suicides.
The author presents a vast panorama of characters, troubled lives, deaths, places and connections, reconstructing her family tree and pasting her thoughts onto paper. The result is a cathartic puzzle tearing apart the elegant silence that surrounded almost a century of family stories. Silence, born as a form of protection, ends up generating the opposite effect: an existential curse handed down to the present. The photographs delve into the psychic heritage in search for answers. The traces left by ancestors, invisible but recognizable as patterns across generations, come back to manifest themselves. Family secrets, which have acted as supernatural forces fueling cycles of suffering and coincidences, are finally unmasked, made visible, shared and healed.
Milk, Weight, Gravity is an intimate stream of consciousness, an act of retroactive care, an awakening. Collages and photographs create a process of connection between generations, from the ancestors to the author – in search of an understanding and acceptance of the past that can shed new light on the present, but also on the future.
Project in the frame of Giovane Fotografia Italiana #13 – VOCI / VOICES
BIO
Anie Maki
Anna Michelotti (Vipiteno, BZ, IT, 1998), alias Anie Maki, was born and raised in South Tyrol. She graduated in Communication Studies in Bologna and specialized with a degree in Photography at Spazio Labò. She is now working as a freelance photographer in Bolzano.
Her artistic practice focuses on relationships, which she explores through photography and keeping a psychological view on the stories shared with her. Part of the process is, indeed, listening and observing, creating portraits that can range from a face to an old receipt. She has a passion for the humanities, writing, reading and print media, as well as collecting old objects and exploring archives – but she’s also happy taking care of a garden.
Her first book, Marinella, was published in 2024 by Lotta Books.
“Photography, for me, is healing through attention and a quiet revolution. A bridge from the inner world to the outside world. It is as if you take the time to fold clothes in the wardrobe of every person you photograph. During analysis, my therapist asked me if I remembered ever looking through a little hole as a child. Suddenly, I saw myself watching my parents argue through the glass door. A door made of frosted glass and a grid, very similar to the rule of thirds. They used to lock me out so I couldn’t see, but I kept looking through the glass. She thinks that the glass now allows me to watch, and to be close to people, while I’m still protected by something. Because I want to be close, but it’s also very scary.”