Stories
The Caiman
I traveled across Cuba as a tourist at a time of great difficulty for the island. Obsolete infrastructure, the strengthening of the embargo and fuel shortages have all contributed to intensifying the frequency and duration of the Apagones, widespread blackouts whose effects spill over into the country’s economic and social situation, further strained by the scarcity of basic necessities such as medicine, food and water. Those who could, have left the country.
In Cuban culture and poetry, the island is often compared to a sleeping caiman, not only because its geographic shape from above resembles the animal but also as a symbol of resilience and national identity. Following the protests of 2021, many Cubans now believe the caiman is ready to awaken.
Some places, more than others, carry with them such a strong imagery that it seems immutable, shaped over decades of representations and capable of overlapping with reality itself. But what happens when the myth cracks under the weight of a profound crisis? Can photography challenge the idea of a place that is already deeply rooted in visual culture and collective memory?
These images arise from the encounter with an unexpected and profound stillness, in an attempt to visually convey the sense of suspension, uncertainty and vulnerability I perceived.
Daesh
Over the last decade, the Mediterranean ecosystem has drastically changed due to climate change, populating itself with alien species that endanger biodiversity and, in some cases, the livelihood of communities. The blue crab (Portunus Segnis) is an invasive alien species from the Red Sea that has settled and proliferated in several Mediterranean seas, including the Gulf of Gabès in Tunisia. Arrived in 2014, with a demographic explosion in August 2015, the crab found favorable conditions for its settlement thanks to the vulnerability of the ecosystem and climate change. Expanding rapidly throughout the gulf, it has become a dominant species which, together with pollution and intensive fishing, contributes to the decline of marine biodiversity, feeding mainly on crustaceans, molluscs and fish
Est
“Est”, started in 2014 and still ongoing, relates this territory of the middle, the territory of “another” Rome, agglomeration almost inadvertent of areas originally separated such as Quadraro, Pigneto, Torpignattara and Casal Bertone. After decades, it connects pieces of a mosaic stratified in a century, according to a strange effect of overall balance. Over the years, this work has turned, crossing the boundaries of the territorial investigation, into a diary of my personal view of the city.
The Bush School
In Liberia female genital mutilation is legal and it is practiced as an initiation into a secret society of women, known as Sande, which is spread in 11 of the 15 counties of the nation. In its “bush schools”, whose rite of access is the cut of the clitoris, the girls spend a period from few months up to three years, in order to learn the respect for the elderly, their duties of future wives and mothers, dances and songs. And they remain totally illiterate. Those who are not Sande members remain on a lower social level and can’t aspire to a good marriage.
Crossing the River
Despite the progress, 66% of the global mortality for pregnancy related causes still occurs in Subsaharan Africa only. Over her reproductive lifespan, an African woman has one chance in 36 of dying during childbirth, while for a European or North American mother the risk is only one in 4,900. The most frequent cause of death is hemorrhage, followed by infections at childbirth, hypertension during pregnancy, and abortions practiced in precarious hygiene conditions. In many rural areas, access to health facilities is hard due to poor road conditions; health staff is not enough; frequent teenage pregnancies increase complications. Even some traditional believes can obstruct safe childbirths, as well as poverty and gender inequality.
Almost wild
The zoo is a kind of theme park where life, with its dimension of the unusual and the marvellous, is taken away from our everyday experience and is hermetically closed off and vacuum-packed inside the box of a vulgar and low-quality spectacle. With the merging of the “natural” into such an “unnatural” context the false and artificial scenario is totally dominant, and it has the sweet and cloying taste of an obscure and clichéd art-house film, emerging grotesquely from an indecorous and tasteless trivialization of uncontaminated nature.
