A photographic journey through Finnmark printed on Fujicolor Velvet paper

‘I arrived beyond the Arctic Circle, in Finnmark, to listen to the story of those who for too long had no voice. Today I am trying to give it back through faces, words, images, and I don’t know if I will be ablè to do it in the best way becausé talking about other people’s stories is complex, one always feels inadequate in some way.
There is something, however, that makes me feel I can try: I come from a border myself, I learned early on what it means to be on the edge. I lost my grandmother’s language, Slovenian, and with the language I lost a part of me, because if you can’t say it then maybe it doesn’t exist or never existed.’

Writes Valentina Tamborra – Fujifilm X-Photographer – in her photographic book I Nascosti (The Hidden Ones), a trilogy of her work dedicated to the Sami people, originally from the Arctic Pole.

The Sami are an indigenous population of around 80,000 people today. There is no secure census and today they live divided by the borders of four states – Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia – in an area they call Sapmi.
Valentina Tamborra has dedicated four years to the realisation of this project and each return has been a small step forward. It is not taken for granted, in fact, to be welcomed into a community that has suffered so much pain and injustice, but over time I have created bonds, friendships that last to this day. The only way to really get in touch with any reality is to listen: to be present, completely open to the other person and what they have to say, suspending our vision, our judgement, for a while.

I Nascosti is part of a trilogy about the Arctic, the ‘trilogy of silence’. Beginning in Svalbard, continuing with the tale of the Lofoten Islands and the connection to Italy and then arriving in Finnmark, the trilogy is my tribute to a magical, mysterious and delicate place. A fragile place, a majestic place that we must protect.

In the context of the European Photographic Festival 2023, a preview of the work – entitled AHKAT-TERRAMADRE – was exhibited at Photosquare in Milan Malpensa, thanks to the involvement of Sea Aeroporti and Claudio Argentiero, the Festival’s artistic director.

The Festival brought 19 photographs to the exhibition, taken with Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, from the X-Series to the GFX medium format, and finally printed on Fujicolor Velvet paper, to be enjoyed by millions of visitors and travellers during the spring and summer season.

Now, the project continues its journey. Perhaps this is the real strength of reportage: being a nomadic genre, made to continue its journey far beyond the place where it was born.