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Chiara Zonca

@shadowontherun

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all about nature 𖥧
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Saved by a Deer by Chiara Zonca

Some landscapes aren’t just seen, they’re felt.

Chiara made this book during a time of personal recovery, on a rural island in British Columbia. For her, photography became a way back to herself: walking, waiting for the light to shift, and slowly finding steadiness in the land around her.

Her self-portraits dissolve into water, forest and light. The result is less a record of a place than a record of healing, a love letter to the island and to the quiet connection between a person and the natural world.

Painterly, intimate, and saturated with colour. This is a book that truly comes alive in print.

Available online.

#LebledSolovievEditions #PhotoBook #ArtBook #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography

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What happens when nature becomes more than a backdrop and instead becomes a lifeline?

In Issue 15 of the Mad Agriculture Journal, photographer and filmmaker Chiara Zonca shares Saved by a Deer, a deeply personal reflection on grief, isolation, healing, and the unexpected ways wild places can guide us back to ourselves.

Created during the early years of the pandemic, the project began after Chiara moved to a remote island off the coast of British Columbia and found herself surrounded by forests, ocean, and a constant presence of deer. One quiet encounter with a fawn became the catalyst for a body of work that continues six years later.

Through photographs and words, Saved by a Deer explores what happens when we slow down enough to remember that we are not separate from the natural world, but part of it.

“There was a time when I saw more deer than people.”

Issue 15 of the Mad Agriculture Journal explores the relationships that shape our connection to land, culture, food, and one another. Through farms, forests, oceans, deserts, and Indigenous homelands, the stories in this issue ask what becomes possible when we begin paying closer attention. Chiara’s work is a reminder that healing can begin with something as simple as looking up and meeting the gaze of another living being.

Read Saved by a Deer in Issue 15, full story in Mad Ag’s bio link. Learn more about Chiara’s book Saved by a Deer in her bio link.

Words and photographs by Chiara Zonca @shadowontherun

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What does it mean to be in relationship with the natural world?

Issue 15 of the Mad Agriculture Journal begins with that question and follows it across 72 pages of essays, photography, poetry, and field dispatches.

Inside, you’ll meet an Indigenous seed keeper carrying generations of agricultural knowledge forward. Ranchers and researchers navigating the evolving conversation around cattle and climate. Oyster harvesters whose livelihoods depend on healthy coastal ecosystems. Vintners cultivating intimacy with place through the vineyard. Shearers following the seasonal journeys of sheep, llamas, and alpacas across working landscapes. Farmers, artists, and storytellers whose work reveals how culture, ecology, and craft remain deeply intertwined.

Moving across farms, vineyards, oceans, deserts, Indigenous homelands, and rural communities, these stories ask what is carried forward through acts of stewardship and what becomes possible when knowledge remains rooted in place.

At a time when efficiency and scale increasingly define our systems, Issue 15 turns toward the people who understand that the manner in which we grow, harvest, create, and care is inseparable from the outcomes themselves.

Issue 15 is now shipping. Link in bio to order your copy.

Contributors:
@theebriarrose
@dr._hopi_farmer
@shadowontherun
@emrpayne
@robhammerphoto
@frame.by.slava
@savhowell.photos
@queergrown
@havstadhatco
@lecuvierwinery
@agrowingculture
@Jane__cav
@_.jonnah
@philipgtaylor
Chris Hastings
@cools_gold

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The boom saloon bookshop at @browns.leith - a considered curation of publications from our members and contributors around the world, alongside our own archive. Open Saturdays, 9-1pm - with all profits raised funding one final publication to rewrite the story of dementia, before we move to the climate emergency. Buy books, spark change.

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Hi everyone! Chiara Zonca @shadowontherun here, sharing some of my work this week. A big thank you to @map6collective for letting me showcase bits and pieces of my projects over the next 5 days.

I’d like to start with a set of images from my latest monograph, Saved by a Deer, a collection of photographs and poems dedicated to my rural island home.

I have been a city person for most of my adult life. It took many years and a number of spontaneous outdoor adventures, to realize that city life isn’t for me after all. After moving to Canada, I felt the urge to explore rural living and, on a whim, moved to a tiny island off the coast of British Columbia. What drew me there was the lush rainforest and the constant proximity to the ocean. This post is all about the green ocean forests I call home.

How does it feel to live in the forest? There’s a mischievous joy in being unseen, sheltered by trees.

As an introvert who thrives in the wild, I find that when I’m alone in nature I can walk barefoot, act a little silly and let my guard down. This set of photographs, along with the poem below, is my attempt to capture that feeling.

And here I am, looking out towards the ocean.

A ferry breaks the incantation. Deep water shimmers in gold.

Trees blur into sky, clouds into sea, everything is in my favourite shade of blue.

An owl sings for a fleeting moment, hovering in slow motion while darkness claims its place.

Shadows darting along branches. A growing forest of twilight.

Time to go home, I think, savouring the moment my woodlands turned eerie.

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We’re delighted to have Chiara Zonca as our next Guest Takeover @shadowontherun

Chiara Zonca (b. 1982) is a photographer living and working in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia on the unceded traditional territories of Coast Salish peoples.

Her practice, balanced between the real and the surreal, delves into the intricate human connections and bonds to nature.
Always attempting to capture a feeling, Chiara’s work explores subjects and places with an emotional and poetic approach.
Her projects often span several years. Travelling slowly across wild areas of otherworldly beauty, she spends long stretches camping and living in the landscapes she photographs, building a deeper connection to place.

Her latest monograph, Saved by a deer (2025), published by Lebled Soloviev Editions is now part of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Princeton University and Cleveland Museum of Art library collections.

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A view of some of the photo books in our library.

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Chiara Zonca, Night Blooms (2021)

Work: 6.5 x 5.5 in
Frame: 10 x 9 in

Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Pearl paper

Available on the-prairie.com. For all inquiries, please contact hello@the-prairie.com.

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View of some of the books in our library.
Photos by Andy McMillan.

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‘The Garden,’ a Prairie group exhibition, launches next week on Thursday, November 6, 2025. Please join us at 93 Allen Street in Buffalo, New York, from 6 - 8 pm! Select works will be online only.

This project is supported by The Generator Fund, a grant for artists administered by The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. @bica.buffalo

Photograph: Matt Wilson, 'The Fire Within' (2024)
@mattwilson_photography

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Quiet moments via @shadowontherun from a Nordic Midsummer humbly spent in a little remote red cabin on a white sand beach in the Lofoten archipelago in northern Norway. You can read a bit more about her time here on her Substack.

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We’re now accepting SUBMISSIONS for a new PHOTOBOOK & EXHIBITION! 📚

Everyone who submits can use their submission fee as credit towards purchasing the resulting book, regardless of whether their work is accepted. Accepted artists will appear in the book, online exhibition, and physical exhibition at our Detroit area gallery space.

Head to the website to submit your work!🔥Link in bio.

Photo by Chiara Zonca (@shadowontherun), from our previous call for entry photobook & exhibition, Investigations In Infrastructure.

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