Palermo is a den of missed opportunities and failures.
Palermo is an amazing city. Potentially.
It overwhelms you, you are powerless. It bewitches you and drags you down. You know it’s a bitch, but that is not enough to make you leave. The more I try to go away from it and settle somewhere else, through fate or a cosmic joke, the more my camera and I find ourselves back there, walking through its streets, its perfumes, its blinding light and thick shadows.
When I leave Palermo, I don’t feel guilt, but anger, therefore love. So, I come back and photograph for the time that I can stay in apnea: I test my lungs and walk through Palermo holding my breath, only smelling and observing, chewing kilometers with an urge to scream louder and louder.
Palermo Imploded is a photographic project divided into ten chapters, a collection of stories about Palermo. A series of “x-rays” which try to show the divide between what we are used to seeing and what we would prefer not to see. The unifying theme in the project is Palermo’s contradictions, as well as my own in relation to the city.
My conflict is between hope and deep skepticism.
They are different symptoms of the same disease.
— Michela Battaglia, New York City
