Winters

I am just outside Shoreditch tube station, it's a regular day in east London, black cabs, bikes, buses hit the road under the usual grey sky. I am going to apply for my visa, I pass trough the lively streets of the east-end, bars are crowded, my first step to a further EAST.

A walk on the edge between two beautiful Italian regions, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, silence and nature bring us to untouched places. It's nearly the end of the year, the mountains's peaks are white and touch a blue sky that we very rarelly see in The Big Smoke(London).

Again walking and walking trough Arbatskaya, I arrived, I am in the heart of Moscow. The city is hard, cold, people run from one place to another with indifference, wrapped up in their heavy coats. I constantly talk with people, although very few speak my language, anyway it's always a surprise, a new story. Living an other city, an other story.

Those winters are almost gone, I am now heading for a brighter chapter.

Dies Irae. Paolo Pellegrin.

I felt that i had to share this beautiful thought found on the book DIES IRAE by Paolo Pellegrin-for the unlucky ones who don't know him-here the biography.

This is just a small piece of a very interesting interview/discussion with Roberto Koch(Contrasto founder) and I strongly believe that those sentences should be stick in every photographers's mind.
  

"Ever since I began working in photography in the early nineties, I've heard about this golden age, which is that of LIFE. 

But personally, during the nineties I did very little work for newspapers because I was still in a self-imposed training phase. It's a phase, apart from the rest, that's never completely finished and I imagine that will continue forever...It's just about trying to find my own voice and let it become a written photography. In this sense, I happen to think of photography as foreign language. Learning to connect with this voice and speak through photography, learning to express oneself through this language-listening to the rules and to instincts at the same time-is something and complex. The question isn't how to take good photos, It's how to take good photographs that succeed to do a number of things simultaneously: to document, to transmit information, and to strike emotion chord. Initially I studied architecture, then I took some photography courses and then I put myself through a period of eight, maybe ten years of rigorous training where i had to learn to express myself in this language of photography.

For years i worked on this-on the gaze, vision-shooting by day and printing by night."

PP 

Москва-Moscow

I wouldn't start the year in a better way. My last experience in Moscow it's been intense and full of emotions, photographing and exploring a new world. I have walked trough the cold night and day

to see more, to know more. To live.

Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov-Moscow 2013.

Sole di Settembre

Beautiful September. The sun is still hot while the first rains arrive, the great change of nature. We head the cold, we leave behind the fatigue of a year preparing for a new begin.

 

September 2012. Trapani, Sicily.

Viaggi in Emilia

Old country houses sit on the vast flat green fields that surround beautiful ancient cities, filled with history, culture and LIFE. 

This is a series of photos took during my recent trips to the region of Emilia Romagna, situated in the north of Italy. There are countless reasons to love such place, and definitely one of those it's the food.

Finally Africa.

 Yes, I say finally because I always wanted to travel and experience Africa personally, not as I conventionally seen it.

 I went for one week in Akosombo, a village not very far from Accra, the capital of Ghana, with Alessandro, a close friend who actually made this trip possible.

Let’s face that when we talk about Africa, we mention something bigger than a continent, as someone (R. Kapuschinski) used to say “Africa is a universe”.

It’s very CLEAR that those six days in Ghana did not give me enough time and knowledge to understand or criticize the issues of a country. My personal idea is that Ghana can be much more beautiful then it is already.

More photos are available here.

Gibellina - Sicily

Here I am again.

During my Christmas holidays at home, Benny very intensely asked me to go and visit Gibellina, a small city in the province of Trapani(Sicily), as you might know my home town.

It’s known that Gibellina doesn’t exist anymore; it was completely destroyed during a tremendous earthquake on 15^th January 1968, where circa 400 people lost their lives and many more were injured.

Nowadays Gibellina Nuova is a new town reborn at 20km away from the old town and has become a real open air museum, as many famous Italian artists have installed their artworks across the streets.

The old town, also called "Il Grande Cretto", is now one of the biggest artwork in the world, as the famous Italian artist Alberto Burri in 1984 covered completely the ruins with concrete, preserving the city streetscape. 

Il Grande Cretto 12/2011

Gibellina Nuova 12/2011