Limbo
2012
Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism
Immigration in Lampedusa.
- Limbo2011
- A young man sits on a hill facing north, towards Italy, France and Germany. Towards Europe. Twelvehundred euros can be the cost of hope to reach Lampedusa, a tiny island half-way between North Africa and Sicily. In 2011, about 53,000 North African and Sub-Saharan migrants arrived in the so-called "Door of Europe", fleeing the unrest of the region. Lampedusa is both the ending and the beginning of the same story.The journey starts in the Tunisian ports of Zarzis, Djerba and Sfax or in the Libyan ports of of Zuwara, Janzur and Tripoli, where migrants gather for days and sometimes weeks before their smuggler organizes the trip. They sail away from the North African shore with an overcrowded wooden boat and arrive between 10 and 30 hours later in what they call the land of freedom. But they will soon realize the gateway to Europe in the middle of the Mediterranean isn't the Ellis Island to the Old Continent. Day after day, week after week,migrants who wouldn't fit in the already overcrowded immigration holding centre slowly filled the streets of the village, sleeping in abandoned boats and under trucks, while others would build their first European home on the so-called Hill of Shame, a carpet of improvised tents built with metal sticks, sheets,clothes and mattresses in an open-air dump of plastic bags, dishes and bottles used as urinals. Migrants thought the hellish trip in the dangerous waters of the Strait of Sicily would bring them to heaven, to the new life they all waited for; but they soon realize Lampedusa, the pearl of the Mediterranean,would soon become a limbo of unbearable waiting.
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The greatest perfection is imperfection.
To Aristotle perfect meant complete, nothing to add or subtract. To Empedocles perfection depends on incompleteness since the latter possesses a potential for development and improvement. Here lies the paradox formulated by Italian Renaissance philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini. The paradox of perfection is that imperfection is perfect.
I travelled around Italy researching imperfect beauties in six different non-conventional beauty pageants and applying a color symbolism to each one:
Miss Chubby, pink as softness;
Miss Trans, purple as transformation;
Miss Mediterranea, yellow as youth;
Miss Plastic Surgery, fuchsia as sensual;
Miss Drag Queen, orange as vibrant;
Miss Over, blue as wisdom.
Six imperfect beauties (due to their weight, clothes, excess of silicone, or age) if compared to the typology of beauty imposed by mass media and the consumerist society we live in. In Italy, in particular, beauty has become a political tool during the Berlusconi era. Since the 80’s, his media empire has introduced a culture of luxury and sex to shape his electorate. Italy became in the mean time a country where half-naked beautiful women are plucked from TV studios and elevated into powerful positions. This culture has generated an unprecedented wave of castings and beauty pageants for girls and women of all ages all over Italy.
In response to the aesthetic and political state of my country, I worked on Perfect, a series of 36 photographs focusing on how the beauty dictated by our politicized consumerist society is emulated by the masses, and on the link between imperfection and perfection.Documentary, Fashion, Photography2012 -
“If you gotta die, and we all gotta die,
it’s me you want to bury you. Everybody in Harlem knows that.
I’m the guy who puts a smile on your face. Other places,
you just look dead”
The Isaiah Owens Funeral Home is in the heart of Harlem, New York. Mr. Owens is an artist, and the corpses are his masterpieces. From the moment they die, the undertaker accompanies the deceased in a process of burial customs resembling the ancient Egyptians. With dedication and respect, the modern Anubis, God of the dead, beautifully prepares the defunct for their after-life.
Death often represents a taboo in Western cultures. A taboo that Isaiah Owens challenges every day.Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism2012 -
12 photographs from the "Hill of Shame" series, Lampedusa, Italy.Documentary, Photojournalism, Photography2012 -
Carneval at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy.Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism2012 -
Borough Park, a jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism2012
