MARTINA
ORSINI
PHOTOGRAPHER

I started traveling from a very young age because of my parents’ jobs – my father was a pilot and my mother an air hostess. In the golden years for air companies, my parents were frequently away from home for long periods of time and often took me with them. It was great to travel that way – encountering different cultures fascinated me and being the only child in my class, at the time, who could say she had already visited so many places, sparked in me the need to record everything I saw. I use to write a lot, but I soon realized that a pen and diary were not enough to capture everything I wanted to remember – there are tones and details that only poets can describe. So my parents gave me my first camera – a small compact device with a film, which was essential in helping me understand that a camera was the only tool I could use to express myself. What made me interested in photography was the ‘journey’ – first in the sense of moving and exploring places, then as a journey of self-discovery. Photography became my way of communicating to other people what I knew about myself through the images I created.

I think that my love for the sea – and for water in general as an element – is inborn.  I cannot remember any holidays I did not spend on a boat. The feeling of moving over the sea, pushed only by the wind, has become something intimate, a philosophy of life, linked to traveling and to moving, which, for me, means life. I do not like being in the same place, the idea is actually depressing – as is living in a city, without a broad horizon beckoning to thoughts and dreams. 

Nowadays I am a proud sailing photographer, photo reporter and storyteller.