“We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.” Heraclitus of Ephesus

MASSIMO LEARDINI is an Italian photographer who has been based in the Norway for the past 30 years where he works with a small number of models on extended collaborations.

This new publication ELV (Norwegian for River) explores Leardini’s fascination with the body and the landscape. Presenting a series of transcendental images of contorted fragments of the female body, set deep within in the primordial forests of Scandinavia. The map that Leardini unfolds is not built, but behaves like a puzzle in the imagination.

The photographs were made in summers between 2014 and 2019 when the Scandinavian light lengthens the shadows due to the obliqueness with which the sun reaches this part of the world. This causes the light to draw the silhouettes of the subjects on the background with a high but delicate contrast.