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In Lewis Carroll’s world-famous novel, the young girl Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. 

The children’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, written in 1865, is one of the best-known works of Victorian literature. Its narrative, characters and imagery have had a widespread influence on popular culture, especially in the fantasy genre.

Italian photographer GIULIA VALENTE, just like Alice, entered a wonderland, or rather her own world a few years ago, the only difference is that she through the camera’s viewfinder.

Graduated in Art, Music and Theatre, Giulia loves old time themes, especially noir movies of the 1930-40s, old songs and books, such as Alice’s story, that inspire her work as a photographer. 

Ever since she graduated from the University of Padua, photography had a major impact on her, so she endeavoured to find a way to bring her passions together. At first, a professional retoucher helped her with advice and advanced editing lessons which brought Giulia closer to editing softwares giving her a lot of creative freedom. Since then, she has been self-taught, improving her knowledge and skills every day. 

Alice’s adventures was her childhood favourite, and when the idea came up as a personal project to photograph the Mad Hatter from the novel in 2018, she was captivated by the topic and the entire genre of fine art photography.

Over the years, she has photographed Alice, the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit, the White Queen, the March Hare, the Caterpilar and the Cheshire Cat in her own artistic style. Two more characters are waiting to be completed, and then according to her plans, we can see the entire series in a photo book.

When I asked Giulia about the outfits and the concept, she said that when we create a series based on a novel, the characters are already perfectly designed by the author. The challenge is in the visual execution. Main elements are obviously given in connection with the characters, but how you really imagine them is individual for everyone.

Since Giulia photographed not only the portraits, but also the typical environments and objects of each character, there were challenges that had to be faced during the project. Certain objects, such as the upside-down furniture in the White Rabbit’s house, had to be photographed separately with the same light setting and proportional distance, and then put together with the portrait.

Born in Padua, Giulia grew up in an environment where she was surrounded by art everywhere, so her style combines the 15th and 16th century Italian and Flemish art as well. All her projects are preceded by thorough preparations and planning before her distinctive dark, dramatic fantasy photos are born.