Documentary filmmaker & visual storyteller
MariaMessanaColville
I make documentaries, photobooks and social content about people, the places they look after, and the ideas that shape them. I studied psychology before photography, so most of my work starts with a question about who we are.
- FilmDocumentary, travel series, social & branded content
- PrintPhotobooks, zines & editorial design
- BasedLondon. Grew up in Nairobi, studied in Exeter & Milan
- SpeaksEnglish, Italian, some French & Spanish
Contact sheet
Local Ocean Conservation
A documentary following sea turtles from rescue and rehabilitation to nesting and release on the Kenyan coast.
Roadtrip
A travel series: nine days on the road around Sicily, edited as one short film for every day.
Backpacking Australia
A travel diary from Australia, told through the people met along the way.
Malak of Food
Building an Instagram and TikTok following from scratch for a Cordon Bleu–trained chef in London.
Nosce te ipsum
Fifty photographs of life through a microscope, asking whether we can ever truly know ourselves.
Every Finger Counts to Give a Hand
A dossier celebrating the 2,000 volunteers who carry Emergency's message of peace across Italy.
MEMEZ
A pocket-sized collection of captioned memes: a study of how we laugh online.
Identity
Two rows of portraits, one face growing up across each, from faded prints to sharp digital.
Nothing Nobody Nowhere
A photobook about time, opening with ink dissolving in water.
Good / Bad
Good luck, bad luck: a collection of superstitions and the folklore behind them.
Mary Contrary
An interview book, made with Leonardo Luigi Pismataro, asking people what being an outsider means to them.
Obsession
A restless night of sleep, watched from above in a grid of frames.
Human vs Nature
A landscape photobook setting the human-made against the natural world.
Social Experiment
A book of numbered experiments on how people behave.
Art × Science
A short magazine and a mind map on where photography and psychology overlap.
Master's Portfolio
The complete portfolio from my master's in Photography and Visual Design.