Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Conceptual photography »

“Can you keep a secret” is a long-term project focused on child sexual abuse. CSA has been running in my family trees since generations, poisoning many of its branches, including mine.

My approach starts from recreating the places of trauma, inviting the subjects to engage physically with the space through cathartic, almost performative actions. Guided by maieutic conversations, these encounters transform in a visual framework that reflects each person's identity and develops a visual dimension between dream and reality; it also recalls the process our minds undergo, while recording/cancelling the trauma.

The diary form, unfolds as an inner archive — a fragmented narrative of violated childhood, a memory shifting between denial and revelation. This project begins with me - with my will to seek for truth. But it opens immediately to a collective dimension. It becomes a global journey, a documentary investigation that weaves testimonies and places into a storytelling that doesn’t aim to explain, but to hold. A diary made of words, old pictures, drawings, recordings. A darkroom of sorts, where the act of revealing becomes one of care. I want to invent a space where the narrative of abuse is not reduced to victimhood but becomes a visual, political, and poetic process of elaboration. A way to regain our own memories and surroundings. A “cartography of silence and resistance,” highlighting how trauma transcends cultural and social boundaries.

No matter how hard the mind tries to erase certain events, the body still remembers. Child sexual abuse is painfully spread: 20% of adult females and 10% of adult males recall an abusive incident within their safety perimeters.

The pain, through the reveling power of truth, can be transformed in strength and enlightenment breaking the chain of silence. Survivors are precious witnesses for the whole society, a bridge toward healing for everyone directly and indirectly involved.