Issue #12 - SUMMER/2012

What’s happening in Milan? What are Milanese people doing?

Certain people keep protecting an identity on the verge of extinction, like the horse-racing workers of Marco Casino; others, as the boys of Anna Adamo, are experimenting different lives on the search for themselves. Others again are fighting against places that degrade identities such as the “Leibniz” shelter portrayed by Ambra Zeni or, others as the “gardeners” of Giuseppe Fanizza, try to reclaim their territory and a lost relation with nature. And, if for some this is an individual effort, undertaken in the intimacy of their closets, as the subjects of Pietro Baroni, for others identity is something to be challenged in the extraordinary world of the Oktagon captured by Edoardo Pasero. These worlds are uncharted yet incredibly varied; these are the tales of a Milan that is alive yet remains otherwise hidden.

The changes that Milan is undergoing are often talked about, reasoned and discussed in the most diverse environments. Milan is living a transition, a change of identity, maybe on route to become more dynamic and cosmopolitan. Yet it is difficult to distinguish clearly what this would mean practically, in our daily lives, in people’s perception of themselves. Two contradictory arguments seem to arise as the synthesis of the situation: our contemporary lifestyle forces us to an ever more homologating life style or, for the more optimist minds, this homologation is just the more evident feature of a superficial analysis, unable to truly understand the rise of new urban categories which are developing regardless of the homologating fashions and trends.

Maybe the problem lies exactly in the setting of the question. Maybe instead of answering to the major and fundamental question, photography is capable of lifting the veil on cornerstone realities that are the essence of Milan and that make it alive.
MilanoCittàAperta, in this summer edition, is glad to host six tales of everyday life of individuals or groups, that are trying, almost fighting, to keep a strong identity, a “uniqueness”. Identity is something that we cannot give up; what we need then is a way of deciphering the multitude of ways in which it presents itself in the buzz of the contemporary city.
Edoardo Mozzanega e Nicola Bertasi

INDEX
• La morte dell'ippica
by Marco Casino
Horse racing in a crisis, photographed by somebody witnessing his work slowly fade away as a part of the past.
• Oktagon
by Edoardo Pasero
Behind the scenes of the Oktagon there is a world fascinating and varied. Different stories and men, meeting on a ring to “beat each other up”.
• Orti urbani
by Giuseppe Fanizza
The urban plots are a spontaneous phenomenon in the outskirts of Milan revealing a will of auto-sufficiency, nostalgia for the rural life and, maybe, an alternative model of citizenship.
• Milan closets
by Pietro Baroni
A photographic incursion in the identities hidden in the closets of Milanese people.
• Luoghi inattesi
by Ambra Zeni
We tend to think of student residences as lively places. When entering Leibniz, as a contrast, we are faced with anonymity, apathy and inhospitable spaces.
• This is our youth
by Anna Adamo
Stories of the sons and daughters of this city, offering nothing or little more.

MilanoCittàAperta | Journal of Urban Photography
www.miciap.com