Chiara Zonca
"Magma"
About Chiara Zonca
Chiara Zonca is an Italian photographer whose desert landscapes explore solitude, stillness, and the feeling of standing small inside vast terrain. Working primarily in the deserts of the American Southwest and other arid regions, she photographs dunes, salt flats, and eroded rock in soft, desaturated tones — images that feel less like documents of place than states of mind. Zonca came to photography after leaving a career in London, and that biographical thread runs through the work: her pictures are openly about escape, silence, and what happens when you remove the noise of ordinary life. Often working in pastel dawn light or under heavy skies, she frames the desert as a space for recalibration rather than conquest — a landscape that doesn't perform for the camera. The series featured here reflects that sensibility. The compositions are quiet and deliberate, the palette restrained, the human presence absent but implied — hers, standing behind the camera, choosing stillness on purpose.
This series was shot in Lanzarote, Spain and traces the passage of a destructive force; the sinister, dangerous and impossibly striking aftermath of an eruption after the dust has settled and fire has turned into stone. The eruptions started on the island in 1730 and lasted six years. During that time, flaming lava rushed from the depths of the earth, turning villages into ashes and destroying the farmers’ fertile land. The eruptions created over one hundred volcanoes around the island including the area known as Timanfaya National Park, one of the youngest landscapes on earth. I was intrigued by this natural phenomenon that appears to be frozen in time and yet ever-evolving. With these images, I emphasize both the scale of this catastrophe and the delicate regrowth that ensued. A subtle balance between the landscape’s innate calm and my tumultuous mind.
