I deeply admire the work of Lorenzo Cicconi Massi. He is a true artist of the gaze and of light—one of the rare photographers who can portray reality as if it were a dream. His images are visual poems: sharp lights, deep shadows, and compositions that surprise with their freedom and emotional instinct. His eye is unique, far from convention, and always brave—defying aesthetic clichés without ever losing depth.

In the project The Last Peasants, Lorenzo takes us into a suspended Italy—an Italy far from nostalgic clichés and close to the raw essence of the land. Each photograph is not just a portrait, but a mirror of a disappearing world. His peasants are not merely subjects of documentation; they are totemic presences, living memory, fragments of a world that endures through gestures, silence, and weathered skin.
This work is precious not only for its anthropological relevance, but also for its visual power. It restores dignity to what is often overlooked. The relationship between humans and the land—so fragile and increasingly at risk—is portrayed here with a poetic and urgent gaze. In an age where we are losing touch with our roots, these images remind us not only of where we come from, but perhaps also of where we are heading.

Vanessa Rusci,
curator of the magazine

Project

"The Last Peasants"
They keep repeating that they’re the last ones left. That nobody’s around anymore. That life was different once. Married to the land, to animals, to plants and trees. Their bodies are marked by years spent bent over the earth, yet they move with grace and dignity. At first wary, they end up sharing the stories of their lives as if you were family. These are the final peasants, the keepers of our rural memory. They seem to come from another time—heroic and human at once. Their future ends with the next sunrise. I began photographing them in winter 2010. After a long pause, I resumed the project in 2019 and completed it in spring 2024.

Artist statement