From the Alps. Women
In the alpine regions between May and October is the alpine season. Very ancient practice in which cattle, sheep and goats are taken to high-altitude pastures to take advantage of additional fodder and continue with dairy production. In Switzerland this agricultural tradition and activity is particularly felt and widespread. It’s a very hard job, which has no days off and requires great dedication, knowledge and physical strength.
The rhythms are punctuated by animals and weather conditions. It’s still night when the shends, with the torch and heavy jacket, come out of the huts to pick up the cattle in the pastures and start milking. The sleepers and alps are isolated places, far from communities and villages. For three, four and even five months, those who work in the alps, live in a sort of isolation in contact only with colleagues, animals and tourists who sometimes pass by the paths. Despite the many difficulties and hardness of this work, many women choose it.
And it’s these women my work has focussed on. I spent several summers in some of the alping pastes in the south of Switzerland run only by women. Shepherd and casare. I tried to get into their daily life, into their intimacy to tell the woman in an unusual context. Trying to grasp the feminine in an environment that at times rejects it. Almost an omymoron. What does a woman feel in the alps, how she lives, what she brings of her deep
