The students of the School of Photography RUFA Daniele Cimaglia and Giuseppe Odore are among the winners of the REFOCUS/2 award, edited directly by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. REFOCUS/2 aimed to raise attention on the “refocusing” of reality, following the effects that confinement has had on the space-time coordinates of everyday life and how this has indirectly transformed the perception of reality itself.
The call, addressed mainly to photographers, artists and visual operators under 40, allowed to “collect” urban spaces, squares, monuments, buildings, museums and other places in order to support the cultural production and activity of artists, emphasizing their fundamental role within society, and constituting a visual archive linked to public and collective memory connected to this unrepeatable historical moment.
REFOCUS/2, realized during the lockdown, impressed in the photos the suspension in the cities, in natural and anthropic landscapes, as well as the way of life and reorganization of spaces, society, work and free time.
Daniele Cimaglia and Giuseppe Odore presented a project entitled “Stories of living”. “Looking at our neighbors – explain the two young artists – singing and playing outside the balcony during the quarantine we realized we did not know anyone. To do this we invited the condominiums to take a family portrait. The intimacy that we live in our homes is usually hidden by the curtains, the aim was to recreate it by placing people in front of them. The courtyard is the collective space where everyone could create sharing and socialization, telling and expressing their thoughts in the first person on a blank sheet of paper. During the shooting phases we realized that we are not the only ones who felt like strangers in the neighborhood. The frenzy of everyday life had led us to ignore the presence of others living nearby. The use of the photographic medium as a tool to get to know each other made us discover the importance of living in a community, of associating names to the faces of the people around us, to feel less lonely and show us more human. Social distancing does not imply seeing one’s neighbor as a carrier of a virus, but as someone we can count on and rely on”.
