Your name
Irene Ferri
Place of birth
Reggio Emilia, Italy
Place where you live now
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) + Berlin (Germany)
3 words to describe you
Intense, weird, alien-esque
Why do you take pictures?
Since I was a teenager, the camera has been my bridge to the external world. My first collection of photographs was called “In every given moment I’m waiting for something to come and distract me”. From an early age, I’ve always tried to make sense of the world through photography. It was necessary - publishing my photos on Facebook felt more natural to me than talking to people, honestly. I don’t think I could NOT take pictures. I can't imagine my life without them.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Cinematography and pop music. Crystals, tarot cards, dragons, meditation. Nights at home, with just a candle to keep me company.
Who are your influences?
Yorgos Lanthimos, Charli XCX, Nicolas Winding Refn, Lady Gaga, David Lynch, Taylor Swift: they have all had an immense impact on my artistic vision. I know that for some people, seeing Taylor Swift’s name next to Lynch might feel like blasphemy, but that’s who I am: a mix between Cruel Summer and Mulholland Drive.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
I think the subject chooses me, always. I observe the pictures I’ve taken and the theme emerges in a second moment - it draws me in, it demands my attention. “No Other Country but America” was an archival work. By examining my own photos, I could clearly see my heartbreak for the American dream - it was right there, in images I might have overlooked for years. I just couldn’t accept that the US was dark, despite being marvelous.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I’d love for people to get closer to what’s important FOR THEM. I hope that, after seeing how intense I am around certain themes - mental health, neurodivergence, a sense of restlessness that accompanies me in the world - they find their own themes, what makes them burn, cry, lose sleep at night, or, on the contrary, feel more connected to life.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
The pill cabinets by Damien Hirst. I saw one in a German museum when I was a teenager, and it still haunts me. Lately, I’ve been very impressed by the work of Farah Al Qasimi. I bought one of her books, Star Machine, and then found her at Tate Modern in London, with one of the most impressive room installations - small photographs all spread throughout the space. This made me realize that it’s not just about the photographs you take - it’s about the feeling you want the viewer to have when they walk into a room with your work.
Is there anything you want to add?
Don’t worry if your inspiration doesn’t come from photography exhibitions or from artists who use photography as their main medium. You can build and create from kitchen recipes, jiu-jitsu classes, personal life events, or a walk on the beach. You don’t need to be obsessed with photography to make photography

No Other Country but America
Project statement

Text by Marta Ciccolari Micaldi

There is no other place in the world that has its own dream for sale. There is no Italian dream or Thai dream or Chilean dream: there is only the American dream.

The whole world looks up to this specific dream.

It's in the USA's flag in whose sacred stars we see a sky of infinite possibilities. We see it until, at some point, a point we cannot foresee or welcome, we see nothing more. And the dream becomes first confusion, then disillusionment, and finally - if one is lucky enough not to have in the meantime completely compromised the soul to buy that sinister dream - detachment. And thus, perhaps, salvation.

Ferri's American story of fascination and awareness is told through the photographs of No Other Country but America, a project that collects 10 years of observation and experience on the ground. In 2013 Ferri moved to Los Angeles to study Cinematography at UCLA University. The more time passes, the less for Ferri things stay into place, like an immense plastic swordfish stranded above soda fridges.

Ferri has seen what one often does not want to see, and once seen, cannot unsee. She leaves Los Angeles and the United States but, unable to make a final farewell, continues to explore them from other perspectives, to look at them - even - from the distance of her new homes in the world, to try to resolve elsewhere a conflict that she nevertheless still nurtures within herself. For this is the most authentic legacy of the American dream today: to stop believing in it, at some point. And yet continue to relive it.

No Other Country but America is the best contemporary visual representation of what writer Bret Easton Ellis had called, speaking of Los Angeles and the United States, "gleaming nihilism."

irene ferri
@ire.ferri