This video is an analysis of the best seller stock videos worldwide, under the keywords: man, men, woman, women.
Through a combination of the best-selling videos taken from online stock archives, this short movie analyzes the commercial images that are bought and sold in the world under the keywords: man, men, woman, women.
For a period of about 1 year I downloaded the best seller video takes under those keywords. I put them together in the editing, focusing in the first part on the videos that identify women, then on the ones about men. Then I used the video where men and women are together and, in the end, I mixed the two categories in order to create an interaction and an epilogue.
I found a sharp contrast between the images that advertise the two genders, strongly idealized.
What is a man, what a woman? What is their role in the contemporary society, how they create a couple, a family, a community? Does advertising influence our lives or answer to our desires?
I completed this project in collaboration with the musician and composer Antonio Cece, who created the music and gave me the opportunity to deepen the subject from the point of view of the cliches and the sensitivity that concerns men.
BIO
Ludovica Bastianini was born in 1986 in Naples. She graduated in History of Art in Naples and then studied photography and visual arts in Barcelona, at the Idep Institute and in Milano, at the NABA, Academy of Arts.


In 2017 she has been selected for “Circulations - Festival de la jeune photographie européenne”, exhibited at the Centquatre in Paris. She has also been shortlisted at the Grand Prix Images Vevey, at the Life Framer contest and won the 3rd prize at Premio Tabò, presented at the Festival Fotoleggendo in Rome.
Her project “In your place”, about child marriage in the world, has been projected in many European Festivals: Les Rencontres d’Arles - Voies Off, Fotoleggendo, Belfast Photo Festival, Festival Internazionale di FotoGrafia Roma, Encontros da Imagem, Format, Fotografia Europea, Fotofestiwal Lódz.


Her research focuses on appropriation art, manipulation of images and how this practice can change our comprehension of reality.