IRL (In Real Life) is an ongoing photographic project that explores the identity and representation of Generation Z — the first to grow up in a world where real and digital life merge seamlessly, redefining boundaries, relationships, and forms of personal expression.
Andrea, 28, Florence. Born in Campania, raised in Abruzzo, now living in Florence. He studies English and American Studies, but his trajectory is artistic: performance poetry, music, drag. The stage is his space of synthesis. He got his first phone late, after much family resistance. Social media also entered his life later than for his peers. Today he uses Instagram with critical distance: a public profile for slam, music, and queer content; a private, more intimate profile, where his body, as a trans person, becomes a space for self-representation. No constructions, only amplifications. He observes with clarity how social media have transformed the culture of his generation: relationships filtered through views and likes, expectations built even before real encounters, anxieties tied to constant exposure. For him, authenticity remains difficult within a platform governed by the logic of profit. He follows Angela Han closely, a voice on non-monogamy and relational anarchism, for her ability to tackle complexity without oversimplifying. He published a poetry collection in 2022, deliberately avoiding posting it on social media as much as possible. Writing, for him, is layering, not fast consumption. His dream is to live off music and words, uncompromisingly. To make the scene a real possibility for life.
Lana, 16, Florence. She was eleven when, after long negotiations with her parents, Lana finally got her first smartphone. It wasn’t the most coveted model among her classmates, but it opened the door to a world she had only observed from the outside: social networks, group chats, shared photos. That small device meant something simple yet profound — feeling, at last, part of a group. Today, a few years later, social media has become an integral part of her daily life. TikTok is just a pastime — an endless scroll through short videos and fleeting trends — while Instagram has turned into a personal diary: a mosaic of profiles, from the most public to the most private, where she can choose who to show herself to, and how. “Only on my most private account do I feel free to really be myself,” she says. And yet, her most authentic space isn’t online. It’s her bedroom — headphones on, sketchbook open, a pile of books on the nightstand. Lana reads a lot, from young adult novels to heavier authors like Dostoevsky and Freud, who help her better understand herself and the world around her. She has a sharp awareness of the power of social media: she recognizes its creative and informative potential, but also the risks of conformity and social pressure. “They make you all look the same, they influence you — but at the same time, they open up possibilities that didn’t exist before,” she reflects.That’s why she imagines they’ll play a central role in her future too. “Social media are part of everyone’s life now — and they’ll only become more so,” she says.
Aelin, 21, Novara. Born in 2005 and raised in the mountains of the province of Cuneo, she is a stunt performer and a Philosophy student living away from home in Novara. Her room — a space she initially perceived as a “cage” — has gradually become a personal refuge, a place to inhabit and transform. Raised with gradual access to technology, she only got her first mobile phone in middle school, more out of necessity than desire. Her relationship with social media is defined by subtraction: for now she has deleted Instagram — no endless scrolling — preferring the slower pace of YouTube and the aesthetic world of Pinterest, stepping away from the algorithm when it turns into advertising noise. A symbol of this balance is a Winx Club glass — the cartoon she loved as a child — retrieved from her grandmother’s house: a bridge between childhood and adulthood, claiming the right to be both strong and fragile at the same time. Aelin inhabits this threshold, between image as narrative and the radical need to remain, at least in part, invisible.
Michael, 23, Florence. Born in Porto Venere, he now lives in Florence, where he studies Photography. He got his first smartphone at fourteen — an iPhone 3 handed down from his brother. It was more his parents’ decision, for safety, than his own desire. He says he could have lived perfectly well without a phone. He was already using social media on the computer back then, but it felt distant, secondary. When asked, “Where do you feel most yourself?”, he doesn’t hesitate: in his bedroom. Online, he explains, you have to present a defined image. In his room, he can be fluid, undefined. If he had to choose an object that represents him, it would be his violin. An instrument without frets, offering no fixed points: to play it requires practice, listening, constant dialogue. “It’s hard to understand me until you really listen,” he says. Like the violin, he doesn’t have a single way of functioning; each person interprets him differently. He uses Instagram for everything: news, memes, friends. He only posts shared moments, never those he experiences alone. He edits his photos lightly, avoiding artificial constructions. He closely follows figures like Tony Pitony, who, in his view, brought Gen Z humor into traditional spaces, proving that a generational language can become central. He’s convinced that social media hasn’t just changed his generation — it has created an entirely new culture: fast, interconnected. Yet he draws a clear line between online friends and those he meets on the street. Two separate worlds. He dreams of working in photography, especially on the technical side: post-production, equipment, creative support. He knows social media will be essential to make himself visible and build connections.
Margherita, 28, Milan. An actress, performer, and singer, she lives in the city where she was born. She moves across different languages — theatre, cinema, photography, writing — as if each were a variation of the same need: to tell stories. Her first phone came in middle school, a magenta Motorola that had belonged to her mother. Her first smartphone was an old iPhone passed down from her father. There was no struggle, no urgency — it was more a practical tool than an object of desire. She discovered Instagram through her father’s perspective, as a space for photographers, almost a visual archive rather than a personal diary. That’s still how she experiences it today. In her bedroom she feels freer, less “posed.” It’s both her studio and her refuge. On social media she shows a specific part of herself — not more superficial, but filtered. No private intimacy, no exposed relationships. Instagram is language, résumé, laboratory. A showcase. If she had to choose an object that represents her, it would be her notebooks. She has been filling them since childhood: notes, names of artists, thoughts, photographs, exhibition tickets. Fragments of life reworked. That’s where things truly settle. She also uses social media as a political and professional tool, especially within the independent context she operates in. She knows they can support and amplify, but also distract. They fill gaps, occupy boredom. She doesn’t feel dependent, but she recognizes their power. She doesn’t have a defined image of the future. More than becoming something, she wants time. Time to make things — and to change.
Through a documentary and intimate approach, the project portrays young people within their most personal spaces — their bedrooms — juxtaposing these portraits with images taken from their smartphones: selfies, stories, posts, and screenshots that shape their online presence. Two visual worlds, one physical and one digital, intersect and overlap to authentically narrate the complexity of contemporary youth.
Andrea, 22, lives in Florence. Born in Imola, he moved there four years ago to study Fashion Design. Between university, theatre, and drag nights, he has built a creative path where makeup, costume, and performance come together. Drag is where he found the synthesis of his passions, developing a persona that blends irony, aesthetics, and stage presence. He got his first smartphone at 12 or 13, an old Samsung passed down from his mother. His relationship with social media is practical: TikTok to observe, Instagram as a professional showcase. He runs both a personal and a drag account, maintaining a coherent and intentional image. He edits his photos only to strengthen their visual impact. He closely follows Jinkx Monsoon, whom he sees as an example of an artist able to merge entertainment and activism. For him, drag inevitably carries a political dimension. On social media he mainly shares work and light moments, keeping his more intimate side private. Looking ahead, he hopes to expand his audience and grow professionally through digital platforms, while imagining a more analog private life built around direct relationships and printed images.
Viola, 23, Milan. Viola has just graduated in Philosophy and lives in Milan, the city where she was born. Curious and thoughtful, she says she would happily study for the rest of her life, but for now she’s looking for her place in the working world. The eldest of three sisters, she grew up sharing a bedroom for many years. For her, true independence wasn’t getting a smartphone but finally having a room of her own. She describes herself as “a nerd on the inside.” The object that represents her best is her collection of Harry Potter books, read long before the smartphone era. Today she mainly uses TikTok and Instagram, where she helps run a podcast with two friends. While her personal profile is quiet and carefully curated, she feels more comfortable speaking openly on the podcast’s page, sharing thoughts about relationships, family, and everyday life. She dreams of a peaceful but meaningful life, filled with travel and work done well — preferably behind the scenes rather than in the spotlight.
Anna, 15, Castiglion Fiorentino, Arezzo. Anna attends a language high school. She got her first phone in middle school, after weeks of insisting — all her friends already had one, and she was forced to follow the class chats from her mother’s phone, who sometimes read the messages and passed them on to other parents. That feeling of being watched stayed with her, making the phone not only an object of freedom but also a mediator between her and the adult world. Today, Anna splits her time between her bedroom — a refuge where she reads, listens to music, and spends hours lying on her bed — and social media, which she experiences with a double identity: a public profile, curated and image-conscious, and a private one, where she can be spontaneous, ironic, even chaotic. On Instagram and TikTok, she mainly looks for new music and rappers to follow, while keeping in touch with her friends. She knows social media are a distorted lens — “they make you think they’re one thing, but in reality they’re another” — yet she observes them with a mix of curiosity and caution, aware that they are now part of her present and, inevitably, her future.
Born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, this generation uses images as a language — a tool for identity and belonging. IRL observes how, from Milan to Delhi, Nairobi to Buenos Aires, the same digital gestures and symbols have become a global code, while still reflecting different cultures, dreams, and contradictions.
Sofia, 14, Castiglion Fiorentino, Arezzo. She attends an art high school, specializing in multimedia studies, where she’s learning animation — a passion that began thanks to a creator who tells the history of cartoons and inspired her to follow this path. Unlike many of her peers, she never really wanted a phone: at 11, it was her parents who convinced her to get one, since up until then she was perfectly happy with a tablet she used for drawing and browsing. Her most authentic space isn’t online but in her bedroom, where she collects and builds her own Funko Paper figures — little paper characters inspired by the TV series she loves. Her online life is more limited: her parents have blocked Instagram and TikTok, so she mainly uses WhatsApp to share drawings, screenshots, homework, or personalized memes depending on the friend she’s sending them to. She mostly follows Ado, a Japanese rock-pop singer, whose songs she listens to while studying Japanese so she can understand the lyrics better. She believes social media can have both positive and negative effects: for her, they’ve led to new discoveries and passions, while a friend of hers suffered psychological abuse online. Still, she imagines them as a tool for her future: “I dream of becoming an animator, and I know social media will be a fundamental part of my journey — just like they were for the people who inspire me.
Bianca, 16, Prato. She got her first smartphone in middle school, after insisting with her parents — she wanted it to stay in touch with friends outside of school. Her favorite social platform is Instagram, which she uses to follow classmates, share photos and stories, and keep memories. Images are what represent her the most: they fill her room and her profiles, and they completely reflect who she is. When she posts, she’s careful not to expose too much of herself: no body edits or heavy retouching, just some light, playful filters with her friends. She doesn’t like following influencers, but she takes inspiration from Madeline Argy, a London model who fascinates her for her style and the places she goes. Bianca believes social media hasn’t changed her or her friends, even though she’s seen other people transform — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the future, she dreams of fashion and cinema: she wants to be a model and, one day, become an actress. Social media will still be there, of course, but not as the absolute center of her life.
The project’s ambition is to expand across all continents, building a visual archive capable of capturing both the universal and intimate dimensions of a connected generation. In the long term, IRL will evolve into a series of international exhibitions and a book — creating a space for dialogue between young people and adults, cultures and languages, the real and the virtual.
Amelita, 21, Milan. She is in her final year at an art high school. Born and raised in Milan, she grew up with very strict parents: no television at home, and a smartphone only arrived in middle school after persistent insistence. At first, thirty minutes a day, under supervision. Freedom came later, almost all at once. She feels more herself in her bedroom than online. Her room holds what social media does not see: sadness, moments of depression, happiness, fragility. If she had to choose one detail that represents her, it would be the dried flowers scattered around her room. She dried them one by one — flowers she was given, found, kept. She feels deeply connected to nature and sees herself as sensitive, delicate. The flowers — hanging by a thin stem — remind her of a kind of fragility that is exposed, yet resilient. She only uses Instagram. She is drawn to aesthetics, to beauty, and shares what she finds meaningful: images, collages, thoughts, protests, fragments of the world. She chooses what to show, but she does not construct a persona. She amplifies real parts of herself. Her latest post is a collage: a Polaroid self-portrait transformed into a sort of Merlin figure, born from a spontaneous creative impulse. She admits she used to depend on others’ judgment. Less so today. She keeps her most private sphere to herself, but shares thoughts that can still be intimate. She observes clearly the impact of social media on her generation: relationships measured in likes, altered dynamics, increasingly unrealistic aesthetic and lifestyle standards. A distorted perception of others, often harmful. She spends more time on Instagram than she would like — at least three hours a day. She is trying to find alternatives: a film, a book. Something that leaves a trace. She dreams of finding the right form to truly express herself — dance, cinema, she does not know yet. But she knows that, for better or worse, social media will likely be part of that path. Not as an end, but as a means.