EDITORIALE

Daniele Pennati

This is a special edition.

First of all because it was born from the collaboration between Miciap and the International review Popoli Popoli (www.popoli.info). In march 2012 we got the proposal to try to describe the multiculturalism of Milan by Photography. This work will be included in the wider scene of the Milano al Plurale Festival, which is going to take place from the 3rd to the 6th of October 2012.
A question came out right spontaneously: is it possible to tell "Milano al Plurale" just through the eye of one or more professional photographers? Don't we risk to trust in an outsider-point-of-view trying to tell a cultural difference of which photographers can just be the spectators?

Trying to tell "Milano al Plurale" we decided to follow a new and different way called Participatory Photography. The aim is not only to describe a multicultural reality, but to give it some voice, asking to those who live and create such a multiculturalism to get involved personally. In this way some young immigrants living in Milan, who knew little or nothing about Photography, have been followed in the difficult work of building up an autobiographic narration using images. For one month and half, under the eye of Daniele Pennati (creator and coordinator of this project), they showed their lives and then slowly they concentrated about one single aspect or event to be told in an organic way.
That's how personal stories emerged. Pieces of different lives.
This one is a very special edition, then.

Most of all because it is done by "non-photographers" who could anyway build up some real narrations about their being foreigners and about their way of looking and living the city, even if they produced some naif and technically unperfect images. Stories where it suddendly comes out a very strong difference in the used "language". A difference which is perfectly able to tell the many individualities that produced these stories.

The images realised during the Partecipative Photography course will be published on our online magazine and on the next editorial of Popoli in November; they will also be showed on October 6th, during the closing event of Milano al Plurale Festival.
Many thanks then to Popoli who helped us to experiment doing this project.


Have a nice vision.