If you have ever felt like being perceived as a woman was, somehow, an act of violence done to you - Ornella Mari has been watching, and she brought a camera.
Mari's debut photobook, Through Hardship to the Stars, is not a pretty thing. It is not trying to be. Shot between 2020 and 2024, the project is a full-body collision with girlhood, body image, and what Dazed describes as "the violence of becoming visible." Which, honestly, is one of the most accurate phrases to land in a press summary in recent memory.
What you're actually looking at
The images are visceral in the most literal sense. We're talking open mouths, mascara-streaked faces, bruised knees, snarling dogs, and slabs of raw meat sharing visual real estate with human bodies. Bodies that are, crucially, almost never at ease.
That last detail is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There is a whole genre of photography that presents the female body as serene, composed, decorative. Mari is not interested in any of that. Her subjects look like they are mid-process - caught somewhere between flinching and fighting back.
Why this actually matters
The conversation around how femininity gets represented in art photography tends to swing between two poles: hyper-aestheticised softness on one end, and shock-value edge on the other. Through Hardship to the Stars seems to be angling for something messier and more honest than either.
Girlhood, when you actually lived it, was not a soft-focus moment. It was weird and uncomfortable and full of a body that felt like it was constantly doing things without your permission. Mari is photographing that specific dread - the one that does not have a clean name but absolutely has a feeling.
The raw meat alone should tell you everything. It is the oldest visual shorthand for flesh-as-object, and dropping it into a body of work about girlhood and visibility is not subtle. But sometimes not subtle is exactly right.
The verdict
For a debut photobook, this is a remarkably focused provocation. It is the kind of work that sits in your stomach a little. Which is, presumably, the entire point.
You can see a selection of images from the project over at Dazed Digital.
