ITALIANS THE MYTH Is an anthropological reportage where the author looks and records peculiarities, bad habits as well as virtues of the modern “Italian mammalâ€, wondering about the contradiction between repulsion and sympathy which arouse at the sight of such Theatre of the Absurd. The project entitled Italians THE MYTH is born from the will to think, observe and document Italy, as a country deeply shaped by the last 10 years of territory policies, political agendas and social and economic history. It marks itself as an attempt to investigate the country's present history by formulating a clear, crisp and incisive reflexion on the consequences and developments of it's internal changes, aiming to create a visual document of contemporary Italy, with all it's complexity
and diversity, through the mediation of the photographic image as a mean to perceive, interpret and display meaning and vision on it's current life. It is our deep interest to provide the viewer with photographic material to re-think and re-valuate Italy now-a-days, pushing aside old stereotypes that still function as a visual dictionary for our collective memory, by creating new representations and therefore new visual codes that could help to structure a more present depiction of the country's image. Pointless nostalgia and old revivalisms are two figure keys that THE MYTH seeks to eliminate from its visual speech, concentrating all efforts on a straight forward observation and a critical awareness not only on its photographic expression but also on its meaning towards the viewer. Our proposal is not only focused on constructing a photographic body of work as an essay on private and collective life, but also a change in the paradigms of how Italians and Italy have been portrayed in recent years if not decades. The project is divided into three chapters: The beaches, the Italians and the holiday. Overtaking The drama Sicilian marriages. The project has started in 2010, the research uses the black and white to emulate the feeling of nostalgic memory, a continuous dejavu between reality and cinema.
