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Elisa Bessega: the outdoors is my home

Elisa Bessega is a photographer born in Padua who then moved to Trento to study law. While studying, she wasn’t interested in the outdoor world, but the mountains of the Trentino capital changed her mind. The desire to explore and discover the outdoor world has taken up space in Elisa’s life, who decided to abandon her legal career and invent a job that would allow her to stay as long as possible in contact with nature. 

You are a photographer and a filmmaker, what does this job mean to you?
I have always shot for myself and I like the idea of setting a mood, being able to express myself and having the chance to see it again. Over time, I realized that shooting could also be an inspiration for others, so now for me photography is about being able to inspire.


Why did you decide to
shoot nature and the outdoors in general?
Because people usually take pictures of the things they like! I spend most of my time in nature, my life is made up of mountains, climbing, trekking, skiing: these are the stories I like to tell. I haven’t always been in the mountains, but thats where I found my dimension. I like to tell others what I felt in finding a new home, a new lifestyle and I hope with my photos to inspire someone to take this path. I realized that if you immerse yourself in nature, you are more in touch with yourself and it is the first step in order to be more serene in the world.


What kind of photography
does inspire you?
The photography I like the most is documentary photography. In fact, although I work with environments and landscapes, what inspires me the most are the stories of those who live in the mountains. I think that the pictures of landscapes I took can be counted on the fingers of my hand, I have never tried it seriously because I am more inspired by people. Also, my best shots are never staged but always stolen, with all the consequences that this has on the type of photography I do. 

What are your favorite outdoor sports and why?
In the mountains I practice different activities: I started with bouldering, then I discovered long and trad routes. After that, I started practicing mountaineering, ski mountaineering and sometimes ice climbing. I think my absolute favorite thing to do is ski mountaineering, because I think its the sum of all these activities. When you ski you stay outside from dawn to dusk and you come back home full of all the beauty that the mountains have to offer.


What does it mean and how does it feel to be in contact with nature?
Nature has a therapeutic function, what transmits me in first place is that feeling of peace, of going back to feeling instincts and scents that are lost living in a very urbanized world. Its a way to remember that first of all we are animals and to resize many of the problems that bother us every day.


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We had many opportunities to travel and discover new places because of the pandemic. What has it taught you?
Paradoxically, with the pandemic, we had a much better chance of discovering new places, because we found ourselves forced to explore what we had around us. I did one of the best tour when I couldnt move from the city, linking all the peaks that surround Trento. I was out there for 4 days, I slept in my tent and I felt like I was exploring new places, but I could still see the city, my home was within reach. It has been great, like when you put your tent in the garden as a kid and you feel like youre having an adventure.


What’s the most incredible place you
ve shot so far?
The most amazing place is in Madagascar. I participated in the making of a documentary about Famadihana, a funeral ceremony in which the local people dig up their loved ones to have a big party, dance together and update them on the country’s news. I came into contact with a culture very far from ours, it has been a really crazy experience. We were inside one of the tombs where the ritual took place and it was a very powerful and touching moment. But above all it was a formative moment in which we understood how other cultures perceive death in a very different way from ours, as a different state of existence where the person passed away continues to exist as a form of memory and physical presence.


What does the word outdoor mean to you?
The word outdoor certainly means sport and many people refer to it as a playground. For me, however, it primarily means backyard, home. I don’t think about a place where I can go and have fun, I think about my home.

Whats your biggest dream?
My dream is to be able to continue to live as I am living now for my entire existence, let it stay that way.


Tell us about your most incredible trip.
In addition to the documentaries in Madagascar, last winter I did the Lagorai crossing in a self-sufficient way and with a friend. For 7 days we didn’t meet anyone, we had to take with us everything we needed to survive, it has been a difficult but intense and exciting experience, it radically changed me. This is the first time I’m talking about it, we didn’t tell anyone because talking about that has always been somehow limiting compared to what we have experienced. Spending so much time in nature in its most extreme form, the one of the mountains, forces you to awaken your instincts, your fears, and you go back living a bit like an animal of the woods. 


What will you be doing tomorrow, meaning in the coming months and years?
This question often presupposes a vision of life where there must necessarily be a career progression, as if becoming “someone” and this vision is deeply at odds with the way I try to live. It really bothers me the idea of looking for success at any cost, beyond the professional field where I want to improve because I started as a self-taught. For the rest, I let myself get carried away by what happens, I don’t want to plan long-term projects and I’m happy with the way Im living. I would like to go on living like this, being inspired by mountains, and going on telling it through photography.