Max Cozzi

MAY 25 Max Cozzi

MazCozzi.com

The Wisconsin Natural is a portfolio of landscape photographs portraying the beauty and wonder that the great state of Wisconsin holds within its unaltered environment. Conserved in a network of state and nationally owned parks, forests, and lakefronts the state holds a sense of midwestern allure. Unlike the immense landscapes that cover the American West, these photographs portray the appreciation of looking into the rich possibilities of a modest landscape. Between the glacial formed hills and moraines, the mazes of lakes and woods, to the dynamic and ever-changing shorelines of the great lakes the natural beauty of Wisconsin is pure and full of magnificence.

— Maxwell Cozzi, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

© Max Cozzi

© Max Cozzi3

Michele Ravasio

© Michele Ravasio

MicheleRavasio.com

Milan is a grey city. Essentially, it’s a uniform casting of asphalt and cement. Bringing some colour to its streets is very hard work.

This project, titled Broken Flowers, is dedicated to the many and various flower kiosks spread throughout each neighbourhood of the city. It tells about an impossible challenge, lost already at the beginning, against a hostile environment, and in the good season against heat and sun too, which threaten to burn the flowers. For that reason the flower sellers have, for more than half of the year, to find any possible solution to cover carefully their merchandise through awnings and cloths of any sort, of any pattern and fabric, that they move depending on the sun movement, and the result is the picturesque look of these little “flower cottages.”

They turn out to be completely foreign, seem to have fallen out of the sky and the tents contribute to further their distance from the surrounding area. Similar, furthermore, is the state of the ones that, besides flowers, are under those tents. 90% of them are young men from Bangladesh who do not speak Italian and manage hardly to understand and to help the nowadays very few clients. For them integration is a mirage simply out of reach, an ideal landing place, last unlucky carriers of one of the activities that will be totally swallowed up by the large retailers.

— Michele Ravasio, Milan, Italy

© Michele Ravasio

© Michele Ravasio3

Fulvio Bortolozzo

© Fulvio Bortolozzo

BorFul57.blogspot.it

A photographic collection of places taken from a soap opera in which I play the protagonist role: my life. The photographs are realized following the Rules of Perspective and are not prepared or planned, but “happen” during the movements. From the taproot of this series I have developed site-specific works.

— Fulvio Bortolozzo, Turin, Italy

© Fulvio Bortolozzo

© Fulvio Bortolozzo3

Ricardo Dominguez Alcaraz

© Ricardo Dominguez Alcaraz

DominguezAlcaraz.com

Working in the shadows is fine. You have the peace of not being exposed and the pressure it entails. But working in the shadows is unappreciated. You do an essential function, or at least an important function, but no one sees you and no one knows your existence, so no one knows your importance.

At the surrounding zones of the city something like that happens. We don’t realise their importance. In fact, we don’t even realise their existence. We pass through these zones in cars, motorcycles, bikes and even by walking. And we do not realise that these limits are what make the way for us to get to the city, make the way for the existence of this city. They nourish the city and through them crosses the things that make a city become a city.

Usually we presume the things and we don’t ask why or how it was. It’s normal, today more and more — the “modern” life is faster, impulsive and direct. There’s no time for reflection, the decisions are here and now. The “now” rules. So we go to our things, fast and without looking around. 

No One’s Land pretends the opposite. It pretends to stop, take a break, look around and reflect. Mainly about the city limits, about these territories that are in a no man’s land, about what defines them and about their importance for the citizens in a city.

But you can’t try to understand them from inside your car. You must walk through them, listen to their sounds, smell their scents, see what things are arranged in them. And the first thing you realise is that, although they are part of the city, they are completely different from the city itself. They are still, almost changeless and it seems that there isn’t much to do in them. They are the perfect and necessary opposition to any city and they cannot exist without each other.

And what do I do? I observe, I listen and I document it all. But without indicating a way of thinking. Just documenting it in a neutral way. I think it’s the better way to give these zones a voice and the chance of being seen and understood. 

— Ricardo Dominguez Alcaraz, Valencia, Spain

no one's land

no one's land