From boats to goats

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Leonard Cohen

This body of work was shot during my many visits to Malga Pausa, Teresa's home and world, where together with a friendship grew a photographic project about this fascinating forty year-old American woman who was living alone with her animals in a remote pasture house in the Italian Alps.

Free Spirit was the name of the sailing boat that brought her to Europe in her early twenties. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had been her biggest dream while growing up in Colorado but a greater passion of raising goats led her to several hundred meters above sea level, to the mountains of South Tyrol.

After six years living without electricity, hot water or any of our modern-day comforts, Teresa was constrained to leave Malga Pausa. The difficulties she experienced where not related to her daily life, which she much appreciated, but rather to some external issues related to the property and to her activity of raising goats, making and selling cheese.

Nowadays Teresa struggles to find her place in a world that is not very open to those who want to live the simplest lives.

Back to the project's images