ARTIST STATEMENT
Rooted in personal experience as a lens for exploring human and social dynamics, Susanna D’Aliesio’s work investigates the intersections of gender identity, patriarchy and colonialism. Drawing from her background in photojournalism she examines how the lingering traces of colonialism shape both personal and collective perceptions of the body.
Moving fluidly between photography and writing, D’Aliesio creates visual narratives that invite the viewer to reflect on the ambiguity of reality and the tension between feeling and understanding. Her practice turns its gaze toward vulnerability — toward those lives and spaces that exist in fragile equilibrium between visibility and erasure.
Through layered compositions built from fragments, gestures, and text, she constructs a dialogue between control and instinct, freedom and constraint, tenderness and resistance. Each image becomes a site where perception and research intertwine, where intimacy and politics coexist.
D’Aliesio’s work ultimately seeks to question how images can both reproduce and dismantle systems of domination, offering instead a space of recognition, empathy, and transformation.
CV
SELECTED TALK AND LECTURES
2025 Lecturer | Actionaid | Art is Love Made Public
2025 Talk with Emanuele Marchetti | My body tales - My body is
2024 Talk with Lou Ms. Femme | When the Gods Fall Asleep
2021 - ongoing Lecturer | La Sapienza University | Master's Degree Diversity and Photography
2024 Lecture and Magazine launch | WSP Photography
2023 Lecture and Magazine launch | Spazio Mimesis
2021 - ongoing Photography teacher | Monochrome, Italia
PHOTOGRAPHER AND JOURNALIST
2022 Founder and Editor | Monochrome Magazine
2017 Journalist | The British Journal of Photography | England
2016 - 2018 Photographer | Alamy, Getty, Sopa Images
2015 Photographer | Un Ponte Per | Italy Reportage about omen conditions in Lebanese refugee camps
2014 Journalist | Il Fatto Quotidiano Collaboration
2013 Photographer | Wimdu | Germany
2013 Photographer | Liberetà | Italy Reportage in territories seized from the mafia throughout the South and North of Italy commissioned by CGIL
2013 Journalist | Melty Network | France
2012 Photographer | Pubblico I Italy
2009 - 2012 Photographer | Infophoto | Italy
2012 Photographer | Kikapress | Italy
2011 Journalist | Radio Radicale
2009 - 12 Journalist | Fuori le Mura | Italy
2011 Video Editor | Uniroma TV | Italy
2011 Radio Speaker | Radio Sapienza | Italy
EDUCATION
2025 - ongoing MA Filling the Gap
Fondazione Studio Marangoni | Italy
2016 - 17 MA Documentary Photography and Photojournalism
Westminster University | England
2011 - 14 Journalism and Communication | La Sapienza University
Thesis: The condition of women in democratic transition countries: The case of Turkey
2014 Journalism and Communication | Yeditepe University | Turkey
2013 Journalism and Visual Communication | Santiago de Cali University | Colombia
2008 - 10 Italian Literature and Communication | Lumsa University | Italy
Thesis: Crisis Communication, L'Aquila 6 April 2009
2006 - 10 Literature, Music, Entertainment |La Sapienza University | Italy
EXHIBITIONS
2025 | Group Exhibition | San Lorenzo Pride
with “When the Gods Fall Asleep”
2024 | Solo Exhibition | Queer Summer Fest (winner)
with “When the Gods Fall Asleep”
2018 | Group exhibition | “Diaspora”
The photographic project conceived and created in collaboration with the non-profit organization “Un Ponte Per”
Susanna D’Aliesio (b. 1985) is an Italian artist based in Rome whose practice bridges photography and journalism. She picked up a camera at the age of six, and what began as a game soon grew into a lifelong vocation. After working with several photojournalistic agencies, she realized that covering Italian politics left her uninspired. She then spent several years abroad, exploring new ways of bringing urgent issues into the media spotlight. Believing that education is the key to a true democratic revolution, she focuses on long-term projects about gender identity, actively collaborating with the subjects she photographs. Her practice also includes educational and outreach projects, designed to share knowledge, raise awareness, and engage communities around issues of identity and representation.
Her work has appeared in publications such as Il Corriere della Sera, The Guardian, La Stampa, L’Agi, L’Espresso, Il Resto del Carlino, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, among others. She also worked as a journalist for The British Journal of Photography. Her project Diaspora, documenting the lives of Syrian and Palestinian refugee women in Lebanese camps, was exhibited in Rome. Most recently, her series When the Gods Fall Asleep was showcased at the Summer Queer Festival 2024 in Rome.
A portrait and documentary photographer, she also teaches and lectures at La Sapienza University of Rome. She is the founder of Monochrome, a Rome-based magazine dedicated to ethics and professional photography. Her work has been presented in both solo and group exhibitions reflecting a continuous investigation of human vulnerability, identity, and perception.