Giovanna Del Sarto
OLTRE LA PATRIA BEYOND HOMELAND
“ Don’t move… you know who comes if you move …”
20th September, Massa, early Sunday morning.
My train was due in a few minutes when I overheard a grandmother threatening her granddaughter for hopping around the platform in an unusual way. I was a bit amused by the explanation the lady gave to friends afterwards:
“ She is really afraid of Moroccan and Albanian people (…) she won’t move anymore now”, said she.
That small talk made me think how Italy seems to be still far away from the concept of a multicultural global identity.
That morning I was particularly sensitive to such a topic. I was going to embark myself in a journey, which would have taken me to the heart of southern Italy and would have helped me to understand how my country has been coping with the immigrants so far.
I had decided to spend a month in Riace, a little village in Calabria region, to photograph a reality, which has been positively reported by newspapers as follows: “Riace has opened its abandoned houses to refugees coming mainly from Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq”...“Refugees are considered a positive resources to an area that is more known for its negative reality”... “Refugees are learning the old crafts of the place”.
I came back home with thousands of pictures. I brought back with me a part of a world, which is my Italy, Italy of goodwill, of hope and diversity.
GIOVANNA DEL SARTO
MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography 2008
