Her childhood in a wealthy family, her adolescence in the favelas, her escape to London, her career as a model. Finally the choice to change again to look for herself in a photograph that could free her. And then he landed in Milan and achieved international success as a portraitist. Many know Monica Silva’s shots, but not her story. She makes some mention of it while she assembles the set of her project My hidden ego, a free photographic laboratory that will be on display Fabbrica del Vapore until June 23rd.
Tall and blonde, with inquiring eyes, she is a complex character. She lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with her mother, three sisters and what she thought was her father, an entrepreneur. At a certain point the man’s company went bankrupt, he started drinking and abusing that girl. He ended up in prison for other violent crimes but at that point it was even worse for Monica. They moved to the favelas with their mother, who was psychologically unstable and unable to support a job.
The photographer says that «the way my mother found to support us all was to sell me to truck drivers. I was only twelve years old… Sometimes instead of prostituting myself I ran away to the markets and managed to get some coins while carrying very heavy crates of fruit. This made me feel great and for a few moments in control of my destiny.” The memories that follow are equally heartbreaking but at 17 Monica says enough is enough. She disappears from her mother’s eyes and inevitably breaks off all contact with her sisters too. She goes to a friend’s house, she starts working as a speaker for a radio station and after some time she is noticed on the street by a man who was scouting for the Elite agency. She starts modeling, she flies to Europe where she studies and works. Yet she still feels uncomfortable.
«Modeling required compromises that I struggled to make. I didn’t want to use my body in the service of others, be they men or high fashion brands. My past often surfaced, I was afraid of relationships and had very low self-esteem. I don’t even have a photo of myself before I was 17 because no one had ever taken one of me. It was as if until that moment, I had never existed for others. I felt like a ghost.” In 1994 a child was born, and it was yet another turning point. Change job again. «Someone gave me a Reflex. I was obsessed with self-portraits but no matter how much I practiced, I couldn’t recognize myself. I was desperately looking for myself in a photograph that could free me and serve to show the Monica I really was, a Monica worthy of full respect.”
It was the 2000s and he was in his mid-thirties at that point. His specialization was (and is) portraiture. The set at the Steam Factory that he cares about is light only in appearance and combines art, psychology and introspection. Monica scrutinizes the girl in front of the camera in silence for several minutes that seem very long: the other poses, resists for a while, then lets go: «When the artifice fades, beauty emerges, the depth of faces and subjects. What interests me in this project is the transformative potential: I would like to encourage people who approach us to undertake a journey within themselves to free themselves and learn to like themselves.”
