IN/VISIBILI

I was in Afghanistan in 1978, when bloody invasions and wars were still far to come.
I travelled through towns that were as immobile as in medieval times, separated by hard landscapes that exploded suddenly in green plains.
Like the corrugated faces of the people inhabiting them; the proud geography of those places was printed in their faces; arid pleatingthat surrendered to luxurious valleys of smiles. Witchcraft.
The same, maybe, that had caught Alighiero Boetti…
Since then, I never went back, I only did so with my memory.
And then, one day, hearing about a small Afghan community in Turin, I thought of meeting them and to pay homage to that country and to its inhabitants.
Each snapshot of this new project of mine is the synthesis of a story. With no empty rhetoric, I tried to tell about a voyage that was the opposite of mine.
The effort of being accepted, the fear of being different, the persisting of their invisibility: everything is written on the skin of the faces and of the hands that I wanted to portray in the act of their stainless, necessary industriousness.
Strong and skilful hands, precise or delicate, cracked or protective, hands used to hold a new born, the first born in Turin from Afghan parents.



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