Sara Lorusso is a young photographer born in Bologna, May 1995.
After high school, she attended the photo school ‘Spazio Labò’ for one year, and later she enrols to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, where she’s studying photography and cinema.
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About ‘I’m on my period’:
Sara decided to work on a subject matter which can be considered as common and not innovative at all. Sara is just focusing on her period, something almost all the women go through every month.
Nevertheless, this topic is not covered as much as it occurs every day, not even remotely.
C41 decided to interview her.
Hi Sara,
It is rather uncommon to even read about girls’ period, not to mention seeing pictures depicting it. Why do you think this happen?
I believe that’s happening because nobody actually knows what it feels like, because not even women have shout aloud what we really have to go through.
Most of the people think that it is a banal thing: for few days every month girls are on their period.
Nobody is getting deep inside the matter, you don’t read on newspapers, for instance, that many professional athletes use the pill to control and avoid being on their periods during competitions.
But why? Because you are in pain! You are not at your best, you get nauseous, not to mention spasms and diarrhea. Often the only solution it to take a pain killer, to put something hot on the stomach and to try forgetting everyone for a couple of hours.
You mentioned the images, in 2016 menstrual blood is still a taboo, something outrageous. Even women sometimes reject the idea of their own blood.
I think this is ridiculous.
When did you decide to start working on such a theme, and above all, why?
I shot the first image about ‘girls’ period’ about one year ago; in that occasion I used red glittery spilling out of underwear.
Once I was talking with a friend of mine and I realized that could have been a meaningful image. But why not to use real blood, something real and not staged, since this is a REAL problem?
When I was younger and on my period I used to lock myself at home, for three days, not even being able to go to school. It was too painful.
Growing up I learned to bear it and to make it to not interfere so much with my own life.
Everybody is different though, I know for some girls it makes no difference if they are on their period or not; that has never been my case.
You approach the subject matter in a very direct way, no space let to imagination. How would you answer to somebody describing what you did as ‘gross‘?
Many will say something like that, but behind the ‘grossness’ there’s reality, without any filter.
We, as women, see those images anytime we are on our period, so why should it be called ‘gross’?
Sometimes my thighs get dirty because I didn’t know I was about to have my period, other times the bed sheets get dirty, others the hands. But I don’t go mad! I get cleaned and I put a pad on.
It is just routine, It is just reality and each of us should approach it more freely and peacefully.
Just think that in the world some women are pushed away from their own family during their period, because people believe it’s a sort of bad luck charm.
I wanted to work on this project because every woman goes under her period, monthly, since forever, and it’s unbelievable that it’s considered outrageous still today.
You decided to use yourself as the main subject; we might say you are taking a portrait of yourself and the whole woman gender at the same time. How do you think the body of work would have looked like if you used another person?
That would have been completely different. Each woman feels different and approaches her period in a different way.
I wanted to create a certain amount of intimacy in my body of work, I wouldn’t have been able to do that with somebody else.
In this pictures there is MY period, it is me in my home, in my bathroom, in my bed. If I had gone into another house, in another bed, It would have been just different.
I created my own story, which I believe though it is the story of many others.
