• “You can tell how much Jasmine Rossi loves her subject. Her stunning photographs … are more than pretty pictures. Rossi shows that successful photographers need both passion and persistence.”

    Russell Hart, Editor in Chief American Photo Magazine
     
    ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
     
    After a life in the heart of London, among the madness of Manhattan, and the eternal bustle of Rome, I longed for the serenity of nature.
     
    The stunning beauty of the immense, vast, and wild southern tip of South America,known as Patagonia, overwhelmed me,and prompted a passion that was to change my life:
     
    In 1995, I moved into a tiny cabin in a national park in Patagonia without electricity, telephone or television. Here I spent two long summers and the darkest winters of my life, observing and photographing the cycles of the natural world. Gradually, I began to comprehend the perfection and harmony ofnature as opposed to the to the incongruity of our modern world.
     
    As the effects of industry and overpopulation progressively destroy the natural world, I set myself the goal to capturethe last vestiges of true pristine wilderness.
     
    To take these images I had to camp out in the wild, ride, hike, drive or sail fordays, weeks, and sometimes months. This quest to find a secret location, aplace untrodden, forgotten, - to remote to even have a name - became a goal in itself, and an essential part of the creative process.
     
    I never know what exactly I may find, but often enough, it is awe-inspiring beauty that greets me at the end of an arduous journey. Only then do I feel the power - the urge - the need - to grab a camera and take a picture...
     
    Unlike many contemporary artists I do not artificially intervene my photographs, beyond“darkroom” work. What you see is a true reproduction of what my camera captured, there is no photoshop – just the grandiosity of nature itself.
     
    The alienation of man from nature is the leitmotif in all ofmy work.  Through my photography I intend to avoid any form of human intervention or presence, with the exception of the relics left behind by peoples that have long disappeared.

    My images show the world as it must have been over millions of years, a world in which humans have no place. It is my quest to save - albeit only in images, what in my opinion, will soon be lost forever. 
     
    BOOKS:
    The Wild Shores of Patagonia, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2000
    La Patagonia Sobre la Mar, Ediciones Larivière, Buenos Aires, 2000
    The Spirit of Patagonia, Ediciones Larivière, Buenos Aires, 2002
    The Four Seasons of Patagonia, EdicionesLarivière, Buenos Aires, 2005
    The Spirit of the North,Ediciones Larivière, Buenos Aires, 2008