Leave no Stone Unturned

In spring 2023 Samira Gollin travelled to Fivizzano, a idyllic Italian town where dozens of stone menhirs have been found. Menhirs are ancient stone idols, created by mostly unknown civilizations and have become a substantial part of local cultures. Menhirs, which means "long stones" in the old Breton language, are enigmatic and fascinating monuments that have captured the interest of the peoples for thousands of years. These towering, upright stones, which often stand in groups or individually, have been carved in various shapes and sizes.

In Fivizzano, she took part in a two-week residency where her visual and documentary work was created. In this region, where the belief in magic is deeply rooted, there are numerous places that are haunted by supernatural and disturbing apparitions appearing in the cultural history. Four people that Samira met on her journey in Fivizzano have confided their stories to her, which deal with special, sometimes inexplicable powers. As different as the people were, what unites them is the discovery of a menhir. Samira Gollin uses this book to reconstruct the experiences and stories that the inhabitants of Fivizzano have entrusted to her. The book "Leave no stone unturned" is a visual-narrative journey to the mystical origins of our ancestry. 

Based on different narrative forms, an interview, a conversation and an e-mail exchange, the four people talk about their finds and what they associate with the stones. These four texts were intended to be conveyed as real but were invented with the support of the author Regina Dürig. However, the photographs that follow the texts and tell the story visually are all real: they are mainly documentary photographs taken by Samira in Fivizzano. Yet, two hidden images and one of the people portrayed are generated with the AI tool Midjourney. With this work, Samira explores the boundaries between fiction and reality. When does something seem generated? What does it take to sell a story as real? How are manipulative and fictional aspects perceived and integrated into a narrative?

During the residency, she collected a large amount of materials: videos, interview recordings, texts, photographs, objects, and notes. Among other things, she was in daily contact with locals from the village of Fivizzano and interviewed people about their lives and this region. By using analogue techniques such as scanning, printing, cutting, collaging and enlarging, she recontextualized the material she obtained and her own photographs. 

Samira created the publication "Leave no stone unturned" as her final project in the BA Visual Communication course at HKB Bern (University of the arts Bern). In her thesis, Samira combines the design of a publication with the invention and writing of stories as well as the development and questioning of her own visual material.