This project invites the viewer into a relational worldview, where the human body is not separated from the land it inhabits. It raises questions about how one documents life without disrupting it, and how visual language might reflect forms of knowledge that do not speak through abstraction, but through presence.

Born in Rome in 1997, Giordano Simoncini began photographing in 2016 during a personal journey through Patagonia. His academic background in philosophy, completed at Sapienza University, informs his approach to photography — one that draws from conceptual inquiry as much as from visual attention. His interest in long-form, observational work developed further through a workshop in Peru with Ernesto Bazan, former Magnum photographer, whose influence shaped both the thematic and ethical direction of this project, Bajo las nubes.

Reflecting on the personal motivations behind the work, Giordano explains, “Since I was a child, I’ve had an animistic connection with nature — it’s the only form of belief I’ve ever felt truly mine. That’s probably why I chose to begin my first long-term work there: I immediately felt a strong sense of affinity with both the land and the people. It all unfolded naturally.”

Giordano does not claim neutrality. His method involves proximity without dominance — photographing with deliberation, particularly when invited into private spaces. In Queros, he documented a family living with food scarcity who offered him to stay with them; “The most delicate moment didn’t come during the spectacular Quechua ceremonies, which I was able to narrate with immediacy and instinct. It happened instead in Queros, when a family, despite having very few potatoes left…invited me to share lunch and dinner and offered me a bed in a former sheep pen. That was the moment I most strongly felt the weight of my role. I decided to photograph slowly, without rushing, without trying to ‘capture’ something. I waited, simply observing their kindness in that intimate space, in order to return it as truthfully and naturally as possible.”

Giordano embraces a form of witnessing that is active but unobtrusive. His role is not to disappear from the frame, but to remain accountable to it. The people in the images are not subjects to be studied, but participants in a shared space of exchange. His process invites viewers to consider not just what they are looking at, but how they are looking.

The Quechua principle of harmony — expressed in the idea that all life is “half earth and half sky” — forms the conceptual and ethical axis of the project. This belief challenges anthropocentric frameworks by rejecting divisions between human and environment, body and spirit, labor and ritual. Giordano’s photographs do not claim to represent the Quechua people in totality. Rather, they offer a glimpse into a lived worldview, where cosmology is not an abstract system, but a way of moving through the world: in the tending of animals, the sharing of meals, the act of walking with purpose across land that is seen not as property, but as kin. This is the principle of “unite and create” — not a fixed idea, but a practice embedded in daily life. These gestures are not symbolic. They are the structure of life as it continues.

Giordano does not impose a narrative, nor does he draw the work toward a singular conclusion. Instead, his photographs invite reflection — not only on the life he depicts, but on the assumptions, we bring to the act of viewing. The project does not seek to translate the Quechua worldview into terms more legible to an outside audience; it resists simplification and instead holds space for nuance and difference. As Giordano explains, “What I hope to do is raise a question, simply by showing — without filters — a way of life grounded in balance with the natural elements…I believe the urgency lies in questioning our own model, not in imposing a new one.”