The Photographer Who is Out For Blood:
Ginevra Bonina documents the global menstruation crisis while turning her lens toward India, published in ZEKE Magazine, Spring 2026.
A woman is intimately familiar with the rhythms of her own body—the sporadic warning signs, the sudden aches, the unexplainable anxieties. She knows the distinct, visceral realities of menstruation—the tightness of cramps, the unmistakable redness of her blood, and the giddy cravings for sweetness. And within this unpredictable cycle, hormonal fluctuations and the unseen labor of a body continually preparing itself for the possibility of life, she also radiates a remarkable glow.
The woman who shares such a remarkable intimacy with her body should be free to understand, to articulate, and to claim authority over it. But more often than not, and as Italian photographer Ginevra Bonina reveals, knowledge regarding menstruation is often limited, the woman’s voice silenced, and her autonomy contested and constrained.
Bonina’s path to photography was rather unconventional. She began her career in marketing before gradually realizing that photography and writing were not only personal fulfillments but a way of making sense of the world and her place within it. She used these two skill sets to confront stigma and highlight overlooked realities for women across the world, regarding issues related to period poverty and eating disorders among LGBTQIA + individuals. Bonina sustained herself and her long-term documentary work through commercial assignments, using them to fund equipment, education, and access necessary to engage with these stories in depth and with integrity. Without formal training, she built her practice from the ground up, spending years refining her craft, shaping her visual voice, and committing herself to understanding and telling the stories of the women around her.
As Bonina grew into womanhood, menstruation emerged as a recurring theme in both her images and her writing. She found herself returning to the same unresolved question: how could something so widely experienced by women remain so visually absent and untold? As she set out to answer this question, research, planning, and careful preparation became integral to her process. What began as an intention to document period poverty (originally with plans to start in Malawi) soon expanded into a broader exploration.
Bonina set out to understand menstruation through various lenses: feminist questions of bodily autonomy, environmental concerns tied to menstrual waste, the gaps and disparities in healthcare access, and effects on women's participation in social and work life. With her camera, Bonina dedicated herself to understanding the deeper systems of stigma and taboo, but more than anything, sought to create a space for women to be seen, to be heard, and to speak on their own terms. One moment, as Bonina describes, came after forming a special connection with a sixteen-year-old woman at a school in India in which the young woman remarked, “This is the best day of my life. All because you’re here, and I feel important, and I can finally tell my story.”
This Indian chapter of her work forms part of a larger body on menstrual blood, with Bonina choosing the region as a starting point for its vast diversity and the potential opportunity to juxtapose women’s varying experiences. New to India, Bonina worked closely in collaboration with local organizations such as the Pinkishe Foundation, which supported logistics, translation, and cultural understanding relevant to her project—partnerships that allowed her to engage more meaningfully with the women she photographed. Recognizing that trust was essential, Bonina fostered collective settings where conversation could unfold comfortably and with ease. She even met her subjects with her own vulnerability, relaying her own personal experiences to the women before her. In many places where their lives diverged across culture, religion, or circumstance, Bonina found that she could still meet them in the shared experience of womanhood.
On the cover of this issue of ZEKE Magazine, a young Muslim woman from a relatively well-off family—her father employed in construction—walks down a narrow alleyway. Her long hair is loosely braided underneath a sheer white fabric, draped softly around her, catching the movement as she passes. Bonina explores how this image gestures towards the ways restrictions and attitudes surrounding menstruation shift across religious and cultural contexts. As she explains, “period poverty is not always correlated with economic poverty.” In many cases, these conditions extend beyond material limitations—restricting girls from attending school, isolating women from daily life, and silencing them through shame. Period poverty, as Bonina explores, is a global issue shaped by a complex interplay of belief systems, social norms, and unequal access to knowledge and care.
This cover image forms part of her larger project Out For Blood, which speaks to a broader global reality—one in which menstruation is universally experienced yet unevenly understood. With India as a starting point, Bonina is “out for blood”, continuing to expand the project’s outlook, tracing how these realities shift across circumstances for women globally. Through her photographs, Bonina does more than invite awareness and understanding; she offers a space for women to feel heard, acknowledged, and no longer dismissed.
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