“Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire”.
Susan Sontag
Nothing is as it seems
Bissap & Bouye
In 2010, through the “Yungar per la pace Onlus” , I venture forth to Senegal with a lovely group of women from Sìncrasi, an artistic laboratory conducted by Anna Bocchi, as part of our regular painting and drawing workshop.
The trip from Dakar to the “Boise Sacrè” village of Amadì Senghor reveals the people’s struggle to administer their daily routine. The route we undertake is lined with a continuous itinerant market sporting all kinds of wares from fruit to tablecloths to telephone cards…
Then the view changes and we come across various heaps of garbage: debris, old tires, plastic. Even our own garbage from Europe feeds into the disorder.
Once we arrive at the village everything becomes more intimate and we are pleasantly absorbed by the Senegalese culture. We visit other villages and share our passion for drawing with the children of Yayeme’s nursery.
In the streets of sand, little pigs, turkeys and children run around freely. They stare at us; the “toubab” (white faces) have arrived.
And then there are beautiful and colourful women who want to sell you anything they can. There is so much joyfulness in their eyes!
Animism, Catholicism and Islam coexist peacefully in this country just like traditional Senegalese medicine (based on herbs and visions) and Western Medecine.
I have gathered random glances, collected photographic images of these people who watch us us and get to know us better as time goes by.
Ancient traditions
Corpus Domini
Procession from the Abbey of Saint Michael to the Church of Saint Mary of Graces, in Procida near Naples (Italy).
A meeting of generations and a meeting of the eyes. Faces as ancient as the traditional religious procession which takes place every year in May through the streets of Procida Island.
An ode to dreams in blue
Cathedrals in the open sky
Above us runs the Eastern Ring Road of Milan with its frenetic and endless babel; underneath it’s all empty spaces and debris, playing fields and absurd little lakes.
The pylons of the Ring Road are like the columns of a profane cathedral erected on a sea of concrete, the tombstone of the previous world.
Contorted infrastructures of the Old Industrial Innocenti Complex - Like devastated ruins, empty and silent cathedrals, the involuntary monuments of today are a testament to those revolutionary years full of hopes, power and rage.
