Submission Monday
Paolo Morales – These Days I Feel Like A Snail Without A Shell “points to an emotional state occupied by the photographer-as-character. The pictures are motivated by longing and a search for a place of safety. This work is ultimately about a search. Hands reach toward each other but never touch. A man ages and has assistance but does not receive or return emotion. Physical touch is pragmatic—it isn’t a manifestation of intimacy. Disparate situations, repetition and lack of logical progression points to a world inhabited by a photographer-as-character moving through the world without a shell while remaining in search of one.”
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Dario Bosio – On the Identity of a Tomato Picker “I went to Grand Ghetto, a cluster of precarious shelters in the countryside near Foggia, Italy, with the intention of documenting the harsh living conditions of the thousands of African immigrants that work in the fields picking tomatoes. Soon I started being confronted by the workers about my right to shoot those photographs. Many others have been here before me, they said, shooting and distributing pictures that were largely unrelated to the image that the people portrayed have of themselves. I am not what I look like, was the key concept of this long speeches I had while I was trying to understand why people were so reluctant to be photographed. Nevertheless, I was fascinated by the vast spectrum of humanity I had been able to come across during my stay. People that saved money for years in order to afford the journey to Italy, a place where they could find a well-paid job and have a brighter future in the ‘promised land’ Europe. People that now live in cardboard shelters with no water or electricity, working ten hours per day for less than four euros per hour. People that had to lose their identity and become tomato pickers.”
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Luca Sironi – Rooms for voices “This project consists of 25 photographs. They represent the halls of the Municipal City Council of different towns located in the Province of Milano, Italy.
These rooms are created and maintained for the sole purpose of hosting, for one or two days each month, the City Councils, therefore people and words. Those words can be inspired by passion and virtue, but also by vanity, anger, hypocrisy, convenience. A concentrate of what is human. In the Council room the fate of a number of important issues, that directly affect the daily lives of all citizens, are decided.
These rooms, when not subject to the pressure of voices and words seem to breathe a sigh of relief. Relieved by the event, those rooms can be emptied of their function, and quietly and calmly ceasing to be just tools and recovering their identity as objects. Nevertheless, in this condition, it is as if each of these rooms could hold the echo of all the words that have inhabited over the years. And it’s like all those voices did not ever really leave.”
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Sanjin Hadzalic – Snapshots After the War “We had to leave our home country of Bosnia, due to the ongoing war (1992-1995). We barely took any photographs with us to our new ‘home’ country, the Netherlands. The memories of home were fading and we had no records to remind us of those better days. We entered a new country and started a new life”
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Stefano Marchionini – Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea “This project combines archive material with original photographs made to reproduce elements and events connected to the story. The facts have been reworked through the fictional filter specific to photography as well as digital interventions. As biographies blur in this unusual approach to imaging, the narrative builds itself freely. The title suggests that choosing between two undesirable options is pointless, as they both lead to the same end.”
