YOU ARE WELCOME
Rome, Italy 2010-2013
[Exhibited at MACRO Museum in Rome for FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Photography XIII Edition. Portrait]
- “Immigrant” is one who moves to another country, leaving their own land, because driven by the need for better living conditions. –
”Eh! Integration is a big word! Eh! The integration is still a concept, a bit far, for me it takes many, many years before this happens. For me, integration is yet to come. There are still many people who say that we should better stay at home. They say: What are they doing here, where there is not job even for us, and all these things..” (An Immigrant)
Between 2010 and 2013 i searched and met 18 extraordinary, even common, persons. The project “You’re Welcome” tells the story of these persons. The only thing they have in common is Rome, coming each one from a different country, everyone with his/her own story, and now living all here, in the italian capital. I took three portraits each person. One in their house, where they live sorrounded by their most intimate and personal things, objects and memories; the other one at work, showing their real and concrete contribution to the society; and the third one, even if without the subject inside, that represents a further potrait of themselves, showing their most beloved and favorite place in Rome. Italy is a country where the integration is not at all completely realized, most of all socially, in the mentality of the people. I wanted to show how richer and wonderful is a multiethnical society, where each person brings his/her contribution, and lives with all the rights and duties, as everyone else. I narrated these stories, in order to tell, for once, a positive story about immigration, about people who left their “homes”, leaving everything, and fortunately they got something better.
When I decided to develop a project about immigration, I was confronted immediately with the vastness and complexity of the issue. My reflection started from the desire to understand which was my intimate relationship with this topic, from my point of view of “italian citizen”. Which had been, till today, my attitude towards immigrants and immigration (apart from having lived my childhood in a small town where immigrants were not almost present at that time, to be son of southern italian immigrants, moved to the north, and to be born and grown up in a land that was not the one of my parents)? I really think that too many people, and not only in Italy, have never asked this question, or perhaps more simply, we just forgot too quickly from our Past, of emigrants people.
I did not know what I could say or tell about it, being able to say many things and nothing at the same time. The phenomenon of immigration is often associated with the media to individual episodes of anonymous negative realities, re-proposed in the television space information daily, which end up creating only prejudices and stereotypes against those who, for the simple fact of having left their country looking for a better way of life, later become the ‘carriers’ of a series of negative judgments that do not concern them in the life of every day.
In the end I chose to tell the stories of these persons; eighteen stories, which have in common only the fact of coming from a country other than Italy and living in Rome with the hope of building a better future. I photographed each of them at home and at the workplace, with staged portraits that would tell something about them and their condition. I portrayed their favorite places in the city, getting a visual mapping of the same, according to their point of view.
The stories I have heard, recorded and later told, are very different from each other. Each one carries with it, the image of a country, and a culture, different from our own, and the combination of all these stories is a credit to the extraordinary wealth potential that resides in a multi-ethnic society. I avoided the stereotypes socio-economic context of the roman society, where certain ethnic groups or populations, for cultural heritage or particular dynamics of the market, have “monopolized” some sectors of the labor market. It’s the example of Romanians, mostly employed in construction industry or of Bengali, in the bazaars or phone centers.
My meeting with each of these stories, happened almost by accident, after having studied and identified the decisive nationalities on the roman territory in the recent years. Based on studies and statistics, drawn up by the various organs of expertise, I pointed out that migration flows are changing, even massively, for socio-economic-cultural reasons, from year to year or cycles of 5-10years and can even distort completely the previous situation. Therefore, this project is located in a very precise temporal context by referring to the current situation of migration on the roman territory. One of the aims of the project is also to be as an observation of a wider phenomenon, and unrelated to the particular conditions of temporality or location, with the desire to make us think a little more about what we live every day and the people who are going, even just for a few seconds, to become part of our lives.
Images
Rome, Italy 2010-2013
[Exhibited at MACRO Museum in Rome for FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Photography XIII Edition. Portrait]
- “Immigrant” is one who moves to another country, leaving their own land, because driven by the need for better living conditions. –
”Eh! Integration is a big word! Eh! The integration is still a concept, a bit far, for me it takes many, many years before this happens. For me, integration is yet to come. There are still many people who say that we should better stay at home. They say: What are they doing here, where there is not job even for us, and all these things..” (An Immigrant)
Between 2010 and 2013 i searched and met 18 extraordinary, even common, persons. The project “You’re Welcome” tells the story of these persons. The only thing they have in common is Rome, coming each one from a different country, everyone with his/her own story, and now living all here, in the italian capital. I took three portraits each person. One in their house, where they live sorrounded by their most intimate and personal things, objects and memories; the other one at work, showing their real and concrete contribution to the society; and the third one, even if without the subject inside, that represents a further potrait of themselves, showing their most beloved and favorite place in Rome. Italy is a country where the integration is not at all completely realized, most of all socially, in the mentality of the people. I wanted to show how richer and wonderful is a multiethnical society, where each person brings his/her contribution, and lives with all the rights and duties, as everyone else. I narrated these stories, in order to tell, for once, a positive story about immigration, about people who left their “homes”, leaving everything, and fortunately they got something better.
When I decided to develop a project about immigration, I was confronted immediately with the vastness and complexity of the issue. My reflection started from the desire to understand which was my intimate relationship with this topic, from my point of view of “italian citizen”. Which had been, till today, my attitude towards immigrants and immigration (apart from having lived my childhood in a small town where immigrants were not almost present at that time, to be son of southern italian immigrants, moved to the north, and to be born and grown up in a land that was not the one of my parents)? I really think that too many people, and not only in Italy, have never asked this question, or perhaps more simply, we just forgot too quickly from our Past, of emigrants people.
I did not know what I could say or tell about it, being able to say many things and nothing at the same time. The phenomenon of immigration is often associated with the media to individual episodes of anonymous negative realities, re-proposed in the television space information daily, which end up creating only prejudices and stereotypes against those who, for the simple fact of having left their country looking for a better way of life, later become the ‘carriers’ of a series of negative judgments that do not concern them in the life of every day.
In the end I chose to tell the stories of these persons; eighteen stories, which have in common only the fact of coming from a country other than Italy and living in Rome with the hope of building a better future. I photographed each of them at home and at the workplace, with staged portraits that would tell something about them and their condition. I portrayed their favorite places in the city, getting a visual mapping of the same, according to their point of view.
The stories I have heard, recorded and later told, are very different from each other. Each one carries with it, the image of a country, and a culture, different from our own, and the combination of all these stories is a credit to the extraordinary wealth potential that resides in a multi-ethnic society. I avoided the stereotypes socio-economic context of the roman society, where certain ethnic groups or populations, for cultural heritage or particular dynamics of the market, have “monopolized” some sectors of the labor market. It’s the example of Romanians, mostly employed in construction industry or of Bengali, in the bazaars or phone centers.
My meeting with each of these stories, happened almost by accident, after having studied and identified the decisive nationalities on the roman territory in the recent years. Based on studies and statistics, drawn up by the various organs of expertise, I pointed out that migration flows are changing, even massively, for socio-economic-cultural reasons, from year to year or cycles of 5-10years and can even distort completely the previous situation. Therefore, this project is located in a very precise temporal context by referring to the current situation of migration on the roman territory. One of the aims of the project is also to be as an observation of a wider phenomenon, and unrelated to the particular conditions of temporality or location, with the desire to make us think a little more about what we live every day and the people who are going, even just for a few seconds, to become part of our lives.
Images