The Silence of the Threads by Claudia Ammirata.

Artist Statement

Rooted in femininity, memory and tradition, this project explores the enduring relationship and emotional connection between women and one of the most symbolically and emotionally loaded garments in our collective imagination: the wedding dress.

I have interviewed and photographed women from diverse cultural backgrounds, social classes, nationalities, and belief systems, highlighting the universality of this feminine tradition and the stories and arguments behind preserving a dress worn only once.

This body of work delves into the deeply personal reasons why so many women choose to keep their wedding gowns over the years, even when love has already faded.

Over time, the dress once a vessel of desire, projection, and celebration remained untouched, resting in silence inside boxes and storage spaces, often unopened for decades. For this project, many of them were retrieved and unwrapped for the first time. Then something powerful happened: In most cases, when the boxes were opened and the hangers lifted, many women discovered that time had left its mark; stains that wouldn’t come out, loose seams, deep wrinkles… And yet, those traces did not diminish its beauty. On the contrary, they transformed the dress into a metaphor of life itself.

With gowns spanning from 1961 to 2018, the images in this project reveal a striking range of styles; from dresses sewn by the bride’s mother or acquired with modest means to exquisite couture creations by houses like Dior and Carolina Herrera. Each garment speaks of its time, its context, and the dreams it once carried.

Each participant contributed a photograph from her wedding day, a moment when she as well as the dress embodied joy, beauty, and hope. New portraits, taken in the present, depict these same women in contact with their gowns once again.

Although faces are not shown, the passing of time reveals itself on the flesh. Wrinkles and fading hues of the skin as evident marks left by years that have gone by. There is no need to see the women’s faces to understand that time has passed; their bodies carry the silent testimony of age, and experience. The dress becomes a quiet mirror, reflecting the story of who we were and who we have become.

By photographing these women and their dresses, I honor their stories, their traditions, the power of ritual, and the enduring ways in which women hold space for their individual narrative.

Through these images, past and present converge, transforming each dress into a vehicle of resilience, memory, and personal identity.

More than fabric, they are testimonies of what was, what remains, and what we choose to keep.