A personal and intimate portrayal of the Neapolitan trans community.
Lina Pallotta's Voce 'e stommache is born out of a close collaboration with Loredana Rossi, founder and vice president of ATN – Associazione Transessuale Napoli, an NGO committed to supporting trans people and protecting their rights, health, and dignity.
The title, derived from a Neapolitan saying, signifies that self-expression and affirmation emerge not solely from the intellect but from a profound, visceral place, and this is the ethos that also inspired Pallotta to venture for the first time into the use of color photography, to capture the many facets of the search for and expression of identity. Portraits, street scenes, domestic interiors, and snapshots of everyday moments–from applying makeup to shopping and sharing drinks–Pallotta's images bear witness to a sense of trust and understanding which breaks down the barriers between artist and subject. Voce 'e stommache thus stands as a heartfelt tribute to the transformative power of friendship and self-expression, a celebration of identity and community, and a poignant act of advocacy.
An Italian documentary photographer born in 1955 in San Salvatore Telesino (BN), Lina Pallotta moved to New York in the late 1980s where she received her diploma in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the Center of Photography. Her fierce motivation to make a difference drew her to the underground scene, to subcultures, to Mexican women, to underdogs, to tell stories that normally don't get told. Her most notable works include Porpora e Valerie (2013) and BASTA – To Work and Die on the Mexican Border (1999), on the lives of Mexican women who work in border factories.
Her work has been shown in personal and collective exhibits in Europe and the United States and published in national and international magazines.
