Events

  LABottega: viale Apua, 188. Marina di Pietrasanta

WOMEN PORTRAITS
Roberto Mutti
Around them only an essential set, yet they fill with their deep looks, with their balanced gestures and their presence. These are the women that  Silvia Amodio placed in front of her objective and with whom she established a relationship based on complicity that allows her to obtain deeply empathetic and beautiful portraits. As she always did also in her previous works - sice this is a crucial element of her style and approach - the photographer focuses on the subjects she has in front of her to catch the deepness of their being. The same set becomes a space for dialoguing, able to create the best conditions the images she looks for. The lightness of this work is only apparent, since with grace it induces to think about determination, strength, courage and finally on the very meaning of being a woman.
Inserted in a specific historical context, the women photographed by Ugo Pannella along the many years he travelled around the world are a constant presence that persists in the most remote places, the most different sitautions and in the most extreme situations. That thing he very well describes as the “georaphy of sufference” is not the size of an ineluctable destiny, but the space of a still possible way of acting.
Pannella is a very sensitive photographer and therefore very inclined to always making sparkle a light of hope, even when this seems to be too feeble. It is in the dignity of women that Pannella often identified this signal of faith. He saw it in the eyes of those women who fight to have the right to study, in the gestures of the mothers that protect their daughters, in the determination of those on whose shoulders burdens the whole family economy, in the pride of those who challenge thousand-years-old conventions and habits to look for a different present and perhaps  different future for themselves.

POETRY AS CHANGE
Ugo Panella

The issue of women and their life conditions, in the many realties of the world, often inspired my work as a news photographer. They are the brave protagonists of  different stories and their strength in reacting to the most unfavourable conditions make them the strong point of society. Especially in those realities where the power of men tries to tame them and take the voice away from their needs.
I saw them fighting in Central America in the fights for the liberation from fierce dictators, in Africa I documented their ability to survive famine and extreme conditions in which they found the strength to grow their children and protect them, holding together a social fabric that was otherwise adrift.
In this geography of sufference and of the subdued condition of women, Afghanistan occupies a particular place. This country is forced to a war that has been going on for 30 years now and here the female condition has been subdued to male for centuries.
Nevertheless, whithin the poorly reassuring frame of a realty that takes a long time to change, there exists another parallel reality: that of those who start from women to try and turn the destinies upside down.
For 10 years Fondazione Pangea Onlus has been promoting microcredit projects so to generate dignity and economy for many families that are victim of a poverty that the conflict exponentially magnifies. Programmes for literacy, roles awareness and for craftmanship development through which more than six thousands women today rached better life perspectives for themselves and for their children.

WOMEN PORTRAITS
Silvia Amodio

I really like portraing people and telling their stories. On this occasion I decided to conentrate on women. I am fascinated by their strength and by their ability to simultaneously cover more than one role.
During the travels I’ve made to tell about the human discomfort, I met women who burdened themselves with very heavy loads, but who have been able to resurrect and build new existences. As Sindiwe Magona, born and raised in South Africa under the apartheid regime, who revolted against her condition managing to get a degree by correspondence. She then left her country and found a job in New York, at the United Nations, where she worked for 26 years. Or women that silently dedicated their life to the others, as Vittoria Savio, now almost 90 years old, who with two degrees in her pocket left Italy moving to Perù, where for over 30 years she dedicated her efforts to help ensalved girls.
During this photographic shoot, set for this occasion in collaboration with “Labottega”, I would like to take photos of women on their own but also next to other figures, to unerline the roles that each woman had along her own life: daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, wife, partner, friend. Women Portraits wants to be a light work, but also an invitation to think about this condition besides our home.
 

Orari apertura mostra: mercoledì - domenica 15:30 - 19:30 | lunedì - martedì chiuso | ingresso libero

LABottega, Viale Apua, 188 - Marina di Pietrasanta LU - 0584-22502 - 349-6063597