Ti auguro che la Guardia di Finanza ti sequestri tutto. Impudente.
If you wanna say hello: cremaschi@prospekt.it
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Fuck Yeah, Tattoos!Ti auguro che la Guardia di Finanza ti sequestri tutto. Impudente.
Police corner AP photographer Dario Lopez-Mills after he took photographs of police charging at a supporter of ousted President Manuel Zelaya during protests in Tegucigalpa on June 29, 2009. Lopez-Mills was not injured in the incident. (REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas)
Roberto Saviano su riti, comportamenti sessuali e regole imposti nelle terre di mafia.
Yes, the editors did put a disclaimer stating the image was digitally altered, and the PDN people are trying to figure out how (best guess is they turned a horizontal into a vertical by adding sky etc). But I think that’s missing the much bigger issue, which is: when choosing the cover image for the biggest international news story of the year, why was it necessary to create a composite or digitally altered image when there was so much incredible photojournalism (professional or citizen) coming out of Tehran last week? (more)
Una riflessione sull’immagine della donna nell’Italia contemporanea, attraverso i volti e i corpi femminili che vediamo ogni giorno nel nostro televisore. Cinquanta anni fa, Anna Magnani diceva al truccatore che prima del ciak stava per coprirle le rughe del volto: “Lasciamele tutte, non me ne togliere nemmeno una, ci ho messo una vita a farmele”. Ma oggi, quali sono i modelli femminili di riferimento? Quali verità comunicano? Quali autenticità?
Mario Spada is a photographer from Naples. In 1986, he started to work in his hometown as a photographer’s assistant for an agency that organized wedding pictures. From 1993 onward he documented various parts of life in Naples, from kids in the projects of the Quartieri Spagnoli to microcriminality and street dealers; from soccer hooligans to dogfighting to the Mafia wars of Scampìa. His pictures have since appeared regularly in Italian and international magazines such as Der Spiegel, Libération, L’espresso, and El Mundo. Every project he finished would end up in a metaphoric drawer, to which he’d add other projects in other drawers, until he had to buy a whole new filing cabinet altogether (still speaking metaphorically here, if you’re keeping track), when he found himself with what amounts to a photographic enyclopedia of the last 15 years of life in Napoli. These are the same 15 years that have seen around 2,000 murders linked to the Camorra. Sooner or later, Mario’s pictures will become a gorgeous, powerful art book that you’ll be able to leaf through and impress your friends with, but for now, we decided to publish some of our favorite pictures of his and ask him a couple of questions about his work and his city.
Vice: What made you begin to photograph your city so compulsively? Normally photojournalists spend their time travelling to Burma and Nigeria and Nicaragua and other exotic, dangerous places.
Mario Spada: From the beginning, I have always been interested in documenting my reality. I am very attached to Naples, and the fact that I already knew how to move around here and who to speak to was a good starting point. Another reason was that I just couldn’t afford to leave. And anyway, I have always had it in mind to do a project like the great photojournalists of the golden age, who only documented one place, observing it and watching it change over the years. Like Francesco Paolo Cito. His work on Naples in the 80s is incredible.
What was your first specific assignment?
I don’t think I began with one particular idea. It started as just a series of pictures. Then I narrowed it down to the Quartieri Spagnoli, Naples’s most infamous neighborhood, and other areas that had a similar feel. Then I started to focus on the women who lived inside these hoods, busying themselves with contraband and drug dealing and other criminal activities. This was in 1995.
How hard was it to get access to this world?
It was very easy. The first time I went in with my camera, the women started clapping their hands, shouting at each other, “The photographer’s here! The photographer!” They were happy that there was a boy shooting them. Then some of them did start to ask what I was going to do with the pictures, and I had to calm them down. It’s always like this. They give themselves, and then they pull back. My subjects are all naturally vain.
But how did you gain their trust? I mean, almost all your subjects are criminals.
Well, the fact that I worked as a photographer’s assistant at weddings helped. Many of the weddings we shot were in these neighborhoods, for many, many years, and that helped a lot. The people gradually came to know me. In Scampìa, or other projects, you have to know people, you have to know how to treat them. It’s always a question of talking to people and gaining their respect. But these neighborhoods aren’t that different from the rest of Naples—in the way of dealing with people—or from most of Southern Italy, for that matter. You have to show a certain hardness at all times.
In questa galleria le immagini dell’Heart Attack Grill, il ristorante di Chandler, in Arizona, noto come il meno salutare degli Stati Uniti: le sue specialità sono patatine cotte nel lardo, una bevanda molto gassata, sigarette senza filtro ma soprattutto i Bypass Burger, panini che vanno dal singolo al quadruplo strato di carne e ripieno (link)
Portraits of instability. Haunting images from the world’s most fragile states (link)
Photo: no credit
— Edmondo Berselli (la Repubblica)