Federico Ciamei - How Can You Live In The Present When You Are 3000 Years Old? A personal view of history, traditions and identity in Italy
What is my relation to Italian tradition and culture? How can I tell you “Italy” without you immediately thinking of our past? How do we represent ourselves? Are we living in the present? How can we move forward when our traditions are so deeply rooted?
I want to explore the identity of Italy today, how our tradition and culture - deeply embedded within the society, are so strong to become a limit. To be creative, to make something new, you must fight against nostalgia and it can be really hard to do it in Italy, when everything around you is constantly reminding you of a greater past.I want to revisit and criticize visual stereotypes used to represent Italian culture. Needless to say that today the subject of national identity is also a political one, when being “Italian” gives you more rights, wealth and opportunities, and the nationalist parties are building legal walls to define and regulate what and who is Italian.
I want to approach the themes of traditions, history and identity both narratively and formally: - formally through photography, that is my language and my culture. I plan to approach photography searching for its limits and working on those. Ideally my photos will besuccessful if they will raise questions about their nature: “Am I looking at a photo or something else?”- narratively showing what the traditions are and telling some of the stories
This ongoing project is divided into 5 chapters: Capriccio, People Named Italo, Replica, Mamma and Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale.
