What memories do places retain of the things that happened in them? It is a question hard to answer, yet it needs to be asked when looking at these photographs by Tommaso Bonaventura and Alessandro Imbriaco, realised for the research project curated by Fabio Severo. They represent places where a Mafia-style crime was committed—hence the title of the project, Corpi di Reato.
In order to produce the photo series, Real Woman Photoshop, Tommaso Bonaventura worked in a photo studio of the same name in Shenzhen/China. Young workers from the huge electronic factory opposite the studio oftencome to have portrait photos made of themselves either as keepsakes or to send home to their families.
Among the key figures set up as commercial icons, Mao Zedong leads the way. Cups, watches, perfume bottles and other mass-produced consumer goods haunt the daily life of Chinese people. From bank notes to Andy Warhol’s portraits, the Chinese economy has never so much benefited from the Great Helmsman than with this unbridled exploitation of his image.
Fondo is a photographic campaign for the establishment of an archive collecting portraits of residents of Casacalenda, a small town in Molise (Italy). This visual census is made possible through a collaboration with the Casacalenda municipal administration that will receive it as donation.
Fondo produces, files, collects and stores documents thus creating an open, available memory space.
Pilgrimages have attracted photographers from the world over, and continue to do so. For Bonaventura, pilgrimage becomes an opportunity to understand, and photography the passport that gains him entry into a world that is foreign to him. This is a world of its own, apparently timeless, which travers different countries and unites multidues that recognize in one another a common interpretation of religious faith.
To qualify as Party members, applicants must be at least 18 years of age and must go through a one-year probationary period. Emphasis is now placed on the applicant’s techincal and educational qualifications rather than on ideological criteria. Members are expected, however, to be both “red and Expert” ( “ hong yu zhuan”), and the need to make the Party apparatus more responsive to the demands and wishes of the masses of the people is stressed.
During the last twenty years I’ve been working several times on portrait commissions for different clients. Any time I needed help in building up sets and in lightning tests, my assistant and friend Cafiero was there.