Melania Rima's Analog Return to Corigliano Calabro

In February 2025, photographer Melania Rima began her first roll of film using a camera inherited from her grandfather, initiating a project rooted in analog photography and familial memory. The series opens with an image establishing a direct link to the camera's original owner, then shifts into a free exploration of Corigliano Calabro, the town in Cosenza province where Rima grew up. The photographs capture domestic scenes—hands working seasonal ingredients in home kitchens, narrow alleys where late afternoon light cuts across facades and rests on a sacred icon painted on a peeling wall, and bodies overlooking the Ionian Sea in poses that feel candid rather than staged. Rima's approach avoids both postcard aesthetics and social documentary, instead presenting the town as an affective space that emerges when one stops seeking the perfect frame and photographs to remember. Each image stands alone compositionally, yet together they form a coherent visual diary, reversing the traditional logic of photographic projects meant to be consumed in sequence. The work highlights the double nature of Rima's practice: individual shots are self-sufficient, while the series as a whole constructs a broader narrative of returning to childhood places with an inherited tool that becomes fully one's own.