divaexhibition 2010
What is a silent auction? And most importantly who needs to be silent? No auctioneer, no paddle for no bid. Silence. Teachers and students descend onto the field by hand, bringing with them a part of themselves, of history, of teaching. Only fleeting images, together with a single goal: integration. Integrate a new student, integrate a new ethnicity, integrate a new culture, integrate a part of oneself. With this ladies and gentlemen of the audience, the reason for which we are inaugurating this evening is to make us feel part of this world and maybe we will be able to add a place at the table. This evening, that Eleonora Accorsi has meticulously organized for all of us, will serve to help a long distant neighbor to integrate into our university. So then, in silence, because the bids will not serve to satisfy our own pride in generosity, but rather to silence the noise that spills out on to the streets of those who have not had the occasion to meet us.
NadiaBseiso
Nadia Bseiso was born in 1985 in Amman-Jordan to a Palestinian father and a Russian mother. She has a bachelors degree in Business administration. Currently she is pursuing a two year visual arts and communications degree in Florence Italy. Living RoomSOS Children’s Villagev Amman - Jordan The portrait of Austrain Hermann Gmeiner, the founder of the SOS children Villages, a family based care taking facility for abandoned children, Hangs in the living room of one of the SOS houses. Every house has an assigned mother that looks after around 10 children. 80 children have lived in this house since its foundation. Anticipation SOS Children’s Village Amman - Jordan Islam 12 ( in arabic translates into Peace ) (left) sits in her living room, while Hanan 6 (Compassion) happily plays around her sisters, and Sabreen 10 ( Patience ) covers her face in the corner. The shadow of their mother Fatmeh 57 ( name derived from the root Nurse ) watches in the background.
Living RoomSOS Children’s Villagev Amman - Jordan
Anticipation SOS Children’s Village Amman - Jordan
Simone Pierotti
Born in 1980, he graduates in 2001 in Visual Studies at Accademia Internazionale dell’Imagine (L’Aquila) and in 2006 in Anthropolgy (Universtia’ degli Studi di Siena). After the One Year Certificate Program in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at International Center of Photography in New York he works as first assistant for Chris Anderson (Magnum Photos), Donna Ferrato and Stanley Greene. Since 2007 he works on personal projects as freelance photographer and writer. He teaches photojournalism at Florence University of Arts (Firenze).
Somalian refugee living in a squat in Via Luca Giordano. Florence, Italy, April 2009
Somalian refugee living in a shelter. Florence, Italy. March 2009
Jerry Lee Ingram
Fashion photographer and native American Jerry Lee Ingram’s work experience includes well-known fashion houses. He teaches Photography and Fashion at the Florence University of the Arts. A MacMurray graduate, Ingram studied art and at Kent State University and Lorenzo dei Medici Art institute, both in Florence. Ingram has earned many wards in photography, exhibits frequently and in 2009, was awarded the prestigious Italian creativity honor Dietro La Bellezza
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Paul Cary Goldberg
Thee photographs were taken in a small pasticceria called Caffe Sicilia on the west end of Main Street in Gloucester, MA USA. Though the caffe is tiny in size it is robust with vita. It has been my privilege and pleasure to get to know and document some of the culture and many of the people of this community.
Massimo Ballarin at Caffe Sicilia in Gloucester, MA USA
Padre Pio and Confetti at Caffe Sicilia in Gloucester, MA USA
Matteo Brogi
Matteo Brogi is a professional photographer, writer, journalist and artist living in Florence, Italy. He started his career as an assistant of different photojournalists and specialized himself at the ICP of New York. He mostly covers corporate reports and all editorial assignments for Italian and foreign magazines on assignment, preferably working on location. He usually deals with portraiture, travel reportage, lifestyle, sport and food & wine. Matteo’s artistic production is quite recent and mixes his classic style with an important post-production action. In 2009-2010 he worked on 3 art projects and had exhibition in Italy. The latest, recently displayed at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, is about Books and their readers, a sort of a psychological portrait of 12 famous people from Italy and UK.
La bicicletta e la Mercedes New York (USA), 2006
Spazi contesi, Betlemme (West Bank), 2009
Pilee BlueMansfield
I believe in freedom and nature. I admire all of those who believe in themselves and understand the importance of living in a world with peace, love and respect for each other. Through my photography I can express and capture moments, tell stories and always create a fascinating record for history.
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David AndrĂŠ Weiss
A native American, David Weiss likes to jokingly call himself an “exeuropeo” with deep Italian roots thanks to his mother. This duality of citizenship has strongly influenced his photographic vision and practice. As Fred Ritchen wrote, “Photography too often confirms preconceptions and distances the reader from more nuanced realities. The people in the frame are often depicted as too foreign, too exotic, or simply too different to be easily understood”. It is these distances that David tries to diminish by looking for nuances within his subjects weather they are images of people or just his surrounding. Sometimes they are obvious sometimes not. David graduated from the University of Chicago in Art History and in 1987 from the International Center of Photography. He has been recognized internationally for his portraits of New York City employees at work on cities bridges, ferries and infrastructure while employed as a city agency photographer in New York. He has covered major international events such as the first attempt on the World Trade Center and the massacre in Bali. He has been extensively published internationally including for Time Life Inc. As a freelance photographer he has worked for NGO’s, the United Nations, as well as a set photographer for many international feature films. He is currently the Department Chair for DIVA here in Florence, Italy.
The Catholic Worker
Beauty Salon, Kingston Town
Jacopo Santini
Jacopo Santini, born in Florence in 1967, after humanities studies and a laurea in Law taken in 1993, has been involved in photographic projects since 1994, most of them consisting in a documentation of unseen areas of his birthplace and of Tuscany. His field consists in the attempt of saving the memory of places just before their renovation or death and the drawing of an alternative visual map of the town and of other places. To this area of his work belong the project about the former convent and prison called “Le Murate”, realized in 2001 just before they were transformed in a residential structure, and, above all, his seemingly endless work, started in 2002, into and about the Albergo Popolare, a shelter for homeless people in the San Frediano Quarter, both of the projects published. Inspired by the same interest he is at present involved in three projects: a documentation of the “Volterrana”, an ancient road (originally traced by the Etruscans) which connects Volterra to the coast; a work about the ancient town of Evora in Alentejo region, Portugal and specifically an old factory that, after the current restoration, will become the seat of the local Art faculty; a project about Iowa started in May 2009. During August 2010 he has started a reportage concerning the Coptic Community in Cairo and the south of Egypt and, since July 2010 a long lasting documentation of La Pergola Theatre Apart from teaching (since 2004 he has been teaching as a photography instructor at Saci – Studio Art Centers International, since 2007 at CEA, and since Fall 2010 at FUA, all of them in Florence) he has also worked and still works as an archaeological photographer and holds workshops, often related to his visual analysis of changing or hidden places, like “Open spaces, closed spaces, held in July 2006 with students from the Academy of Art of Belgrad.His deep passion for literature and music (classical and jazz), but also for other, less academic aspects of a country’s culture often affect his choices and the content of his courses, since it is his belief that photography, particularly in a phase of profound change (the passage from traditional support to digital) cannot be consciously used, practised, studied regardless a 360° care for the other media and art forms.
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Cosimo Bargellini
Cosimo set his first B&W darkroom at the age of 11, in a small closet of his family apartment. This has been the beginning of his long relationship with the photographic medium. He started his professional career as an assistant of Richard Scott in London when he was 22 and then of Roberto Bastianoni and Verita Monselles at 24. He started his own studio in 1988. Cosimo has been a photo instructor for Italian and International institutions for more than 20 years. As a professional he worked for the fashion industry, for architecture, geographic and illustrated magazines, for Italian and International publishers, and in the advertising industry. He is also a renowned product and food photographer as well as an architectural photographer. He is actually the Palazzi International Relations Director and during his frequent trips around the world for his job, he loves to take candid pictures with a tiny digital point & shoot camera, focusing mainly on cultural diversities and people behaviors, the 2 works on display are belonging to his last trips in Brazil and China, Fall 2010.Some of his personal works are in the Permanent Collection for Italian Photography at The Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.He contributed with his photographs to illustrate more than 45 books.
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Roy Passalacqua
My name is Roy Passalacqua.
I have found a passion in
photography. Photography keeps me gorunded, and if I did not have my camera, I would lose my mind. It is hard to be original in this field, so I am constantly pushing myself to go beyond what others have done, and at the same time one upping my own work. I've come a long way from Cleveland, Ohio, and I plan to keep going.
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Acknowledgements Gabriella Ganugi David Weiss Marina Bucca Giulio Vinci Elena Paolucci Jamira Mancini Elfrida Curri Nadia Bseiso Pilee Blue Mansfield Roy Passalacqua Cosimo Bargellini
Matteo Brogi Paul Cary Goldberg Jerry Lee Ingram SImone Pierotti Jacopo Santini Laura De Santis Matt White Sara Janni Alberto SImoncioni ...and to all the PALAZZI staff
di PA L A Z Z va www.palazziflorence.com Florence Association for International Education