5 miglia di braccia milanesi
What has the once agricultural Milan become? A photographic research project about the places that were once farmsteads and where people used to work the land.
5 Miglia di Braccia Milanesi tells a photographic story of the transformation of a territory, over time.
This research starts from the reading of a repertoire of historical documentation, published in "Le Cascine di Porta Vercellina" by the association "Amici Cascina Linterno". This textual analysis reports the stories of the farmlands in the West of Milan, testimonies from the world of rural agriculture, whose traces date back to the Xth Century.
This photographic project revisits places, old agricultural areas from times gone by, where the farmsteads used to be, documenting their current state: in demolition, in abandonment, survived ruins or forms of social resistance for the recuperation of these sites. For some, these places could appear degenerated, for others as the natural transformation of spaces in time.
This report was realised in order to investigate the Western side of Milan, and it leaves opportunities for exploration open as a continuance of this photographic research project. The city is still full of signs of its ancient rural background.
