Tourism in Giglio, for The New York Times, April 2012.

Mario, 66. Catania, Sicily.

Ilaria. Paris, February 2012.

Perfect

see the full project here

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 applied a color symbolism to each one:

Miss Chubby, pink;

Miss Trans, purple;

Miss Mediterranea, yellow;

Miss Plastic Surgery, fuchsia;

Miss Drag Queen, orange;

Miss Over, blue.

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.

Hill of Shame

This is a parallel series I worked on while covering the immigration crisis in Lampedusa between February and May 2011. See the full Hill of Shame series here.

The so-called Hill of Shame (definition given by the Italian media) is a hill in the island of Lampedusa, half-way between Sicily and North Africa in the Mediterrannean Sea, where hundreds of migrants lived in poor conditions in improvised tents during the immigration crisis in April 2011. Tents were built with metal sticks, sheets, clothes and mattresses in an open-air dump of plastic bags, dishes and bottles used as urinals. 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 and stranded on the on the island in appalling conditions. Migrants weren’t provided with the most basic humanitarian assistance such as shelter, medical care, blankets and access to sanitary facilities, while thousands slept outdoors.

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© Gianni Cipriano

Lampedusa. April 2011.

‎”M / Le magazine du Monde” gave me the wonderful opportunity and complete freedom to work on a self-assigned photograph to shoot for the “Carte blanche” section on page 3 of the magazine.

I decided to work on Palermo, the city where I was born and that I love more than any other. A city with a glorious past and a unimaginable potential, unfortunately exploited and abandoned by its administration and the silence of the majority of its population.

The red carpet was photographed near one of the warehouses of the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, an ex industrial district transformed in a cultural space and abandoned in the past 10 years. This photograph is dedicated to mayor Diego Cammarata, to his friends and accomplices.

As Palermo enters 2012, the city looks into a mirror and faces the heritage of 10 years of lack of administration. The capital of Sicily, which boasts 2,700 years of history and culture with few parallels in Europe, has been ranked the last regional capital of Italy for its quality of life by Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s financial daily newspaper. Raped, exploited and abandoned. Palermo, despite its famous negative connotations, has the power to face such deterioration thanks to its inhabitants who give the city a unique character with a surreal touch of irony and incomparable savoir-faire. This week, as the Spring elections approach, non-partisan and apolitical committees have formed a city movement which foresees the future of Palermo as a continuation of its glorious past. A positive sign for a city, an island and a country that have been for too long considered as Europe’s non man’s land of illicit affairs and non-governance.

Giulia

Lugano

New York