Corinna Luce Photography, London (2026)

10/02/2025

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A few days ago, while digging through my archive, I found this analog series I shot for a university project back in 2021 while visiting family in Rome.
At the time, I was experimenting with analog and studying Rodchenko's Russian formalism, so I decided to explore Eur (Universal Exhibition of Rome), a neighbourhood built during the dark era of fascism in my country.

Eur was conceived as part of Mussolini’s broader vision to reshape Europe. He saw Fascism as part of a larger European movement and aimed to solidify Italy's role as a dominant power, rivalling other fascist regimes like N**i Germany. The neoclassical architecture of Eur wanted to evoke the grandeur of imperial Rome and symbolised these ambitions of power and control.

As I revisited these images, I couldn’t help but reflecting on their relevance to today’s political climate in Italy and across Europe. What struck me was the visual connection between the symbols of fascism—rigid, controlled, and oppressive—and the face masks that became ubiquitous during the COVID pandemic. Both symbolise an attempt at control, yet they are a symptom of our society's vulnerability. There is a contrast between the illusion of absolute order in the architecture and the chaotic realities of the pandemic.

The setting itself is filled with contradictions: the imposing architecture of Eur, which was designed to project power and dominance, stood in contrast to the city’s state of decay and the disruption of the pandemic.

On a technical note, my camera had a light leak I didn’t catch at the time, which pretty much ruined most of my shots. It was a bit of a disaster, but it actually forced me to get creative with cropping and put in some serious hours dodging and burning in the darkroom to save what I could. In the end, though, those imperfections kind of added to the vibe of the series, fitting with the themes of vulnerability and decay. Empires' can't help but fall.

09/02/2025

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During a presentation of a company that provides labor from India to handle paperwork for U.S. insurance claims, I asked the CEO what the future of his company would look like if the U.S. were to suddenly implement a public health system. Unsurprisingly, my question was not appreciated. While that exchange connects to other topics I’ll explore in a separate post, it inspired this piece and planted the seed for a different discussion.

This piece focuses on the other side of that coin: the complex reality faced by developing countries that depend on providing underpaid labor to wealthier (often former colonial) nations. A controversial aspect of this is the role of artificial intelligence (AI).

As AI continues to advance, its dependence on cheap, often invisible labor grows. Workers in the Global South are frequently paid low wages to perform the essential task of labeling data to train AI systems. This hidden labor is critical to the development of AI, yet it remains largely unacknowledged.

While AI promises to make life more efficient, it also raises significant concerns. Automation is replacing jobs across industries, from customer service to manufacturing, leaving workers anxious about job security. At the same time, AI-powered surveillance systems are increasingly used to suppress freedoms. The economic benefits of this automation predominantly flow to large corporations, while the labor force bears the brunt of the costs.

This system can be seen as a form of digital colonialism, where the Global South undertakes the demanding, low-paid work that enables technological advancements, yet gains little in return. These workers often lack adequate protections or fair compensation for their contributions, even though they are building the very foundations of our technological future.

A Vicious Cycle
2x1 m, mixed media on canvas

Some good readings:
Ruha Benjamin – Race After Technology
Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Nick Dyer-Witheford – Cyber-Proletariat
Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Googlization of Everything

07/02/2025

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Last fall I spent a few days with my bestie and her fam, hand-harvesting organic olives in the heart of gorgeous Abruzzo. Some of these trees are over 40 years old, standing as quiet witnesses to the rhythms of nature. Nourished only by water, wind, and sun, they yield the most exquisite olive oil!

November felt way too warm here on the mountain. Climate change is showing up everywhere, which made us pause for a sec between all the fun. So, amidst the work, laughter, and connection, we took a moment to honour the generosity that the land keeps offering despite everything.

03/02/2025

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Another collage. This one came as a reflection over the many aspects of the internal duality we are forced to live as human beings.

Our inner children, trapped between unspoken needs and burned toys, and our inner critics, grown up on the clock and imposed onto us by a society built around the self but not around humanity. Chaos and order. What we call black and white. What we decided to address as feminine and masculine.
We fail to integrate all the possible dualities that exist within and around us. We fail to see the shades of grey, and colours that exist in everything that is more complex than a single cell, or than a single truth. We are gears in a machine designed not for harmony but for control, over the world and over ourselves..
What is the way to integrate, to embrace the multitudes within and around us, and to achieve a state of inner and outer Oneness?

Cut poetry by .notions

02/02/2025

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Humans are not made to understand large numbers and I couldn't understand the impact that conflicts, corporate greed and climate change have on human displacement until I travelled to one of the countries that are particularly affected by these factors.

Just Mumbai, one of the largest megacities in the world, saw its population rise to 12.5 million by 2011, growing by a quarter in just 20 years. Being a coastal city, this makes it increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

The movement from rural to urban areas in India is driven by a number of factors, including land degradation, climate change, and the growing control of the food industry by corporate giants.

The last Census (2011), shows that about 455 million people migrated within India, with 64% coming from rural areas. The Indo-Gangetic region, one of the most intensively farmed areas, has seen the most significant shifts.

This pattern of migration dates back to colonial times when heavy taxation on farmers pushed them into poverty. A similar kind of economic pressure exists today within neo-colonial models, through corporate trade and industrial policies. These forces are supported by political and economic interests driven by a ‘growth first’ mindset.

For a good read, the article "Climate Change and Uncertainty in India's Maximum City, Mumbai" by Adam, Movik, and Parthasarathy explores the pressing challenges Mumbai faces. It highlights how unregulated urban development and governance failures exacerbate the city’s vulnerability to climate risks. The authors examine issues like housing insecurity, caste, and gender discrimination, showing how these factors intersect to deepen the impacts of climate change.

A Vicious Cycle
2x1 m, mixed media on canvas

31/01/2025

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Diverted Blood
Analog, 4x5
2022

Since chemotherapy burned my ovaries in 2013, I’ve been living with artificially induced menstruations. Great for keeping the clock ticking, less so for the bones.
In autumn 2022, I was advised to switch from standard hormone therapy to a treatment that provided the hormones I needed to stay healthy without inducing artificial menstruations, which came with the challenge of letting go of the symbolic rhythm I’d grown used to. Something that felt deeply tied to my feminine identity.

In response, I turned to art photography to navigate this profound rite of passage and its effects on my body and mental health.
Menopause is a key phase in a woman’s life. Historically, and still today in some cultures, older women are revered as keepers of wisdom. Scientists suggest this role might explain why women’s brains metabolise energy differently and age more slowly than men’s.

Yet, menstruation and menopause—two essential female cycles—are still stigmatised in modern society. They’re often misunderstood or dismissed by a production-driven, patriarchal culture that avoids cyclical life and carries a negative view of aging and anything “old.”

Through this series, I explored and honoured menopause as a rite of passage. It helped me reclaim menstruation as a powerful, creative symbol for all women. To mark my last bleeding as a young woman, I used it to water a fig tree, a symbol of fertility, abundance, and knowledge. In Catholic iconography, however, its leaves became symbols of shame and sin, associated with sexuality and used to cover the "impure" ge****ls of Adam and Eve.

In this work, I celebrate the tree as part of life’s natural cycle. When I photographed it in autumn, its leaves were falling, and its fruit had begun to rot. An unexpected turn that deepened my process of acceptance and letting go. By shedding its foliage and fruit, the tree saves energy for new growth.

Creating thorough life’s imperfections is still creating life.

30/01/2025

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I hope you enjoyed the Italo-English voiceover. Here is the translation:
"This winter, I traveled to an eco-village for the very first time. I visited Coricelli, a community nestled in the stunning Italian Apennines, just a short distance from Florence.
For over 20 years, Coricelli has been an off-grid haven where everything is done with intention, following principles of permaculture to ensure minimal impact on the environment. The houses are energy-efficient and mostly built with eco-friendly materials. Members of the community cultivate organic food, create homemade and ecological cleaning products, filter used water naturally, and compost all waste—giving back to the Earth only what it needs. All this without giving up on comforts.
In just two weeks, my body and nervous system felt the positive effects of a chemical-free and stress-free lifestyle in harmony with the natural cycles of the seasons and days.
Though small in scale, Coricelli taught me about diverse approaches to sustainable living and how the strength of a community sharing the urgency of protecting our planet can bridge differences among people."

For those who may be interested, Coricelli's community is currently looking for new members 👀

10/01/2025

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I found this self-portrait I made in 2022 while experimenting with collage for a project exploring the symptoms of early menopause. When my body refused to accept hormonal replacement therapy.

After a few shooting sessions to produce material for my mural-sized collage, I changed my direction and went for analog large format to focus more on the ancestral meaning of menopause as a rite of passage in a woman's life. I'll post that next time.

Still, here and there, I find traces of those initial ideas. They remind me of that challenging period, a time when managing both my body and mind was incredibly difficult. This is a shared reality for many women navigating peri-menopause and menopause, stages of life still often overlooked by research.

We live in a system that tends to define people's value based on their utility.
Particularly, women are producers of humans before menopause, consumers to be exploited throughout their lives, and burdens once past their “productive” years. Menopause has been stigmatised as the beginning of an irreversible decline, reducing women to something deemed neither attractive nor useful.

The phenomenon of early menopause is on the rise. For some, it occurs “naturally,” triggered by an endocrine system disrupted by the overwhelming presence of chemicals and microplastics in our environment. For others, it’s the result of pathology, sometimes caused by genetic mutations (which are mostly influenced by environmental factors). Frequently, it stems from other pathologies or treatments for those conditions, such as those linked to pollution, stress, and lifestyle. An example is chemotherapy, which, rooted in a Western approach to medicine, prioritises curing illnesses at the expense of the rest of the body, rather than preventing them.

Experiencing menopause at a young age, while it had many implications, opened my eyes over a series of malfunctions affecting our medical, social, and economic systems, as well as the way we treat our environment and, consequently, ourselves. One of those life experiences that can somehow become liberating, if you are willing to see the glass half full.

06/01/2025

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This project reflected on the harmful cycles created by the West’s flawed growth model exported by colonising societies. It was inspired by recent travels and explores how, in developing countries like India, the race for industrialisation, following the exploitation suffered under colonial rule, deepens inequality within the social fabric and damages the environment on a global scale.

Visiting India through the Westminster Working Cultures program was a true eyes-opening experience of the kind I could not have had just by travelling there as a tourist. The negative effects on people and planet caused by the western economic system are extremely evident in this part of Earth.
Experiencing climate anxiety for the first time is paralysing. My heart was painful and my mind bewildered.

After leaving India I bought Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy by activist Vandana Shiva, which gave a voice to part of what I was feeling.

The book highlights how billionaires and international corporations, under the guise of philanthropy, push harmful agendas in key areas like agriculture, health, and technology, but prioritise profit and control over protecting local communities and ecosystems.
It explains how industrial agriculture, framed as a solution to food scarcity, promotes monocultures that destroy biodiversity, degrade soil, and displace communities.

Similarly, in health, while philanthropists claim to improve health outcomes, they often create new markets for pharmaceutical companies by pushing for more reliance on medical products like vaccines, antibiotics, treatments and even the pesticides that industrial agriculture needs. They undermine community-based alternatives, traditional knowledge, and public health systems, making people more dependent on corporations, insurance companies, and banks, rather than sustainable, local care.

Corporate-driven land grabs and industrial farming accelerate climate change, forcing rural populations into overcrowded areas and in extreme living conditions, where they become cheap labor for the same industries causing their displacement in first place.

'A Vicious Cycle'

2x1 m, mixed media on canvas

03/01/2025

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You’re the Ghost of This Place

I took these photos right before shutting down the photographic studio I called both work and home from 2018 to early 2022.

The studio was massive—too big for me to truly own—and it was always buzzing with strangers. For years, I couldn’t leave it unmanaged for more than a couple of days. This meant giving up on important things like traveling or even feeling at home.

But more than the business itself, it was my intense attachment to the space that really trapped me. A housemate once said, "You’re the ghost of this place," and they were right. When the first lockdown hit in 2020, it didn’t change much for me—my life was already confined.

Living there, I felt my body and mind dissolve into the space. My skin seemed to blend with the walls, becoming part of this breathing, cocoon-like organism.

The sensations of entrapment and identity loss I captured in these photos feel like they resonate on a larger scale, echoing what so many experienced during the long periods of isolation and restriction brought on by the pandemic. The images reflect a shared, universal struggle with confinement—both within our spaces and within ourselves.

Despite the overwhelming sense of entrapment and identity loss that came with turning an unfulfilling job into a physical prison, those years became some of the most valuable training I’ve ever had.

Corinna Luce Photography

10/02/2025

09/02/2025

07/02/2025

03/02/2025

02/02/2025

31/01/2025

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