#01.2014
Editorial Italy
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Verdi is alive!
Bangladesh
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Croatia
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Istanbul
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Russia
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World
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Point of u
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Multimedia
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Contacts
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Ship eaters
Childhood’s magical kingdom
I love Gezi Park
Generation Putin
Comrade Kalashnikov
Italy’s immigration
When the others go away
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EDITORIAL Mikhail Kalashnikov died two days before last Christmas. He was 94, and his legacy is spread all over the world in over 100 million copies: the AK-47, one of the most popular machine guns in history, which Kalashnikov designed 67 years ago. Our photojournalists have come across it in more places than they can remember: this issue’s photo gallery, selected from our archives, is a chilling testimony of the AK’s ubiquity. Giuseppe Verdi was much more than a great composer. His music was so complex yet so easy, so universal that its widespread success can be described as a global phenomenon – two centuries before globalization. 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth (in a small farmhouse in the countryside near Parma), and P’Zero decided to pay its tribute to one of the greatest composers of all times by sending Alessandro Gandolfi, himself a native of Parma, to retrace his footsteps and discover the legacy left by his heavenly music. Sergio Ramazzotti takes us to a living hell instead: it is in Bangladesh, along the shores of Chittagong, where hundreds of decommissioned ships are brought every year from all over the world to be dismantled by hand by local people – sometimes kids – whose life expectancy, due to the risks involved in their
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job, hardly goes beyond 50. After this poisonous smalll world, Petra Mrša takes us back to the enchanted atmosphere of another microcosm, by describing, with her extaordinarily intimate and delicate images, her nephew’s process of growing up. Then we go to Turkey with Bruno Zanzottera, who, during last summers’s uprising in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, found out how the young protesters, by protecting the park’s trees, were trying to protect their future. Same worries and aspirations for Vladimir Putin’s Russia’s younger generations, met by Simone Cerio and well represented by the Pussy Riot singers, recently released from jail. This issue’s multimedia is also by Simone, and it tells the story of a young Italian surgeon who decided to complete his training the hardest way, in war-torn Afghanistan. Finally, we are happy to announce a new section: it is called Point of U. Every month, we will propose a topic, asking our readers to shoot it from their point of view: the best photos will be published on our Facebook page, and the very best will make P’Zero’s portfolio. Last month’s topic was immigration, an issue which finds Europe particularly sensitive about. We were overwhelmed with the number of photos that our readers sent us, and very pleased by their quality. So, congratulations to those who were selected for this issue’s Point of U.
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ITALY
VERDI IS ALIVE!
ITALY
VERDI IS ALIVE! By Alessandro Gandolfi Giuseppe Verdi was born two hundred years ago on October 10th, 1813. He was the son of an innkeeper from the Parma region and became the most famous Italian music composer of all times. His masterpieces were an integral part of the unification of Italy. What has Verdi left behind? His native home is in Roncole di Busseto, his villa where he spent most of his life in Sant’Agata, including the land where he loved farming. His operas, staged in the world’s best theatres, are his true legacy. Today schools, theatres, hospitals and conservatories are named after Verdi, including the Conservatory in Milan where the eighteen-year-old Verdi was rejected as a student. The nursing home, hosting elderly musicians and opera singers, founded by Verdi, is also named after him.
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At Milan’s Verdi' Conservatory, students attending a stagecraft lesson are rehearsing Rigoletto with tutor Laura Cosso, left. When he was 18, Verdi sat for the entrance exam here, but failed
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Parma, a bas-relief portrait of Verdi on sale at Oliva, a shop of printed materials in Strada al Duomo 7
Milan, piazza della Scala with the Teatro alla Scala in the middle. Verdi was a protagonist at the Scala for many years. He made his debut in this theatre in 1839 with the opera Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio
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Parma, stagehands Matteo Ferrarini (on the left) and Nicolò Baruffini move part of an old set to the warehouse of the Teatro Regio 9
Milan, Teatro alla Scala, a woman takes a picture in the foyer next to a statue of Verdi. The opera being performed is the Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, Verdi’s first work staged here in 1839 10
Busseto (Parma), an old musical score of the Traviata at the Salsamenteria Baratta, an historical shop full of Verdi relics
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Villanova sull'Arda (Piacenza), peasants in the countryside. This land once belonged to Giuseppe Verdi, a countryside man who loved living a free life outdoor as a peasant 12
Sant'Agata (Piacenza), Villa Verdi. The room of Giuseppina Strepponi, Verdi’s second wife. The composer bought this farm in 1848 and, after renovating it, went to live there in 1851 13
Busseto (Parma), Palazzo Barezzi. 12-year-old cello player Luca Giovannini from Rovigo rehearsing before a concert together with the pianist Davide Furlanetto from Padova. Palazzo Barezzi was the house of Antonio Barezzi, patron of Verdi, who married his daughter 14
Buscoldo di Curtatone (Mantova), actor Umberto Fabi playing Verdi at the Teatro Verdi
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Verona, the Arena theatre before the beginning of Verdi's opera Aida. In 1913, the amphitheatre hosted for the first time an opera, and it was the Aida. Since then, it became the largest opera house in the world
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SHIP EATERS
BANGLADESH
SHIP EATERS
LOVE GIVERS By Simone Cerio
This is a journey. A physical and mental journey. Sexual assistance is a technique of psychophysical approach to disabled people, based on massages, kisses, visual contacts and erotic stimulation. It is commonly believed that disabled people have no sexual needs and their isolation causes them
BANGLADESH
SHIP EATERS By Sergio Ramazzotti Chittagong, Bhatiary seafront, south-eastern Bangladesh: a laid-up ship arrives on a beach in the Gulf of Bengal to be dismantled. Like ants, hundreds of men, often adolescents, attack it and hammer it down to small pieces: a supertanker, weighing 20 thousand tons, literally disappears in four months. It produces iron, but also asbestos, mercury, crude oil residues, acids and poisons, which devastate the coastal ecosystem and cripple the fishing activities. This business, however, is one of the country's main earners, and the government turns a blind eye to environmental catastrophes, the illegal asbestos trade and the conditions of near-slavery in which the ship eaters are forced to work.
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Shipbreakers board a ship in the process of being dismantled 19
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you want to build a ship, wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, you do not have to set up a shipyard, you just teach men to covet the immensity of the sea. And if you want to destroy it? It's less romantic (this we write ourselves), but just as simple: you only need men desperate enough to crave a starvation wage, provide them with a blowtorch and send them on board after the ship is aground on a beach. Even in this case, at least in Bangladesh, a yard is superfluous.
What you see on the coast of Bhatiary, in eastern Bangladesh, just north of Chittagong, is in fact very little romantic: it is more like the apocalypse, materialized in dozens of ships as monstrous anvils planted on the seabed at a short distance from the shore, the useless propellers in the air, the prows as huge rusty swords pointed inland, all around a swarming of human beings (or what remains of them), lured here by the thousands by desperation or or need for those wages we were talking about, engaged in breaking the ships with bare hands, forced - like Rambo, only with a quarter of the muscles - to call home what you call hell.
And if for them, or us, Bhatiary is hell, for an owner forced to retire his ship is heaven: Mr. Papadopoulos (all references to existing persons is random, but it is a fact that most of the ships come from Europe) sells his wreck – and a moment later has all forgotten about it – to one of the Chittagong companies specialized in shipbreaking, which becomes the owner and can comfortably dismantle it on the beach under Bangladesh law, that is without the obligation to dispose of the toxic substances safely, the hassles caused by environmentalists or the tedious formalities of signing a contract with the workers, in other words with industrial costs close to zero. Just to give an idea, buying a 20,000ton tanker costs the company US$ 700 per ton, or US$ 14 million. Each of the 100 men (or children) who take it down completely in four months working between 10 and 16 hours a day earns 10 cents per hour: in 120 days, the company will have spent around $ 20,000 in wages getting about 19,000 tons of steel, which will sell at $ 800 per tonne, with a net 20
profit of $ 1.2 million. And that's not counting the sale of instruments, on-board furniture, lifeboats, and the propeller alone that can fetch up to $ 40,000. Incidentally, the dismantling of a tanker of this size will produce between ten and one hundred tons of lead, arsenic, zinc and chromium (found in paint), up to seven tons of asbestos, up to ten thousand liters of oil and other lubricants, and up to one thousand cubic meters of hydrocarbon residues, all substances that the Basel Convention considers hazardous waste and that, without a yard, end up in the sea and have already destroyed the subsistence economy of the many fishing villages along the coast, whose inhabitants are forced to feed on that little poisoned fish that still ends up in the net. 

All this explains why Chittagong’s dismantling industry, born by chance in the 1960's when the Greek ship Alpine ran aground on the coast of the city during a cyclone, is among the largest in the field and the most appreciated by shipowners. And it seems, in one of the poorest countries in the world, the US$ 120 million in taxes paid to the state each year are more than enough to ensure its ability to operate in defiance of the laws. "The industry is very powerful, it acts like the Mafia: it moves a lot of money and in Bangladesh when you have money you can buy anyone, no matter how high," says Muhammed Ali Shahin, founder of Ypsa (Young Power in Social Action ), an NGO that tries to keep the government under pressure to regulate the activity of shipbreaking. On paper, the shipbreaking industry seems to play an apparently important social role: it employs 30,000 people, another 250,000 benefit from it indirectly and everything seems to be going smoothly until an unskilled worker is shot down by a steel plate fallen from above, or puts a foot wrong and falls into a hatch from the upper deck of an oil tanker smashing six floors lower, or is betrayed by one of a thousand other physical or chemical traps that lurk inside a vessel as in a Vietnamese jungle in times of war. At that point the man (or child) ceases to exist in two ways, the first because he left to meet his Maker, and the second 21
because the company he worked for, there being no contract to prove the contrary, generally denies having ever seen or heard of the person. On the beach of Bhatiary workers walk in every direction, under the blaze of the sun, heads bowed, eyes red from the vapors of acids and fibers of asbestos, hands black with grease, shoulders crushed by the weight of the steel plates, feet sucked up by the smelly black mud that was once sand and today is the product of the torn entrails of vessels. Huge slices of keel, cut off by death squads assigned to the dirtiest work in the belly of the ships, are towed to shore with winches and disassembled bolt by bolt, cut to pieces with a blowtorch, and with little more than their bare hands, hour after hour and day after day, the workers destroy a machine frighteningly larger than a man, built to withstand the fury of the sea. And now and then, incredibly, they smile, even if there is no joy in their eyes. They smile, one would think, because until yesterday they were the poorest of the poor, hungry farmers driven to the coast by the drought, and now they have a job, and a dollar a day is still better than nothing in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world. They smile because maybe soon there will be a job for a son, and the family income will double. They smile because some time ago, when in the tank of an oil tanker a worker with an acetylene torch cut a tube filled with gas and the explosion took away six men, they were somewhere else. They smile because 47 percent of them are illiterate, so they can’t read a statistic and ignore the fact that only one per cent of them is over 45, since illness, mutilation or death keep you from reaching alive or still able to work the age which in the Western world inaugurates the second youth. They smile because they ignore what is a mesothelioma, also known as asbestos cancer. Eleven per cent of them smile just because it's what comes natural to children and adolescents under 18 (some of the younger workers are 13). They smile because when you live in hell, even getting away from the flames for a moment to take a drink of water can make you smile.
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The inhabitants of the fishing village of Bhatiary, like those of most coastal villages in the vicinity of the shipyards, have always lived off the sea, and they are now impoverished by the polluted waters where the fish are getting more and more scarce by the day 23
Shipbreakers dismantle and carry inland the pieces of a ship
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A shipbreaker on board a ship in the process of being dismantled 25
In the fishing village of Bhatiary, people cross a seawater channel on a precarious suspension bridge 26
A shipbreaker on board a ship in the process of being dismantled
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The huge hull of a cargo ship being dismantled
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A shipbreaker on board takes a break from work
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Two young shipbreakers: the average age at which a shipbreaker starts working is 14
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Shipbreakers dismantle a ship and take on shore heavy slabs of asbestos, which, though illegal, is being bought and recycled by local factories
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CHILDHOOD'S MAGICAL KINGDOM
WOMEN OF THE
CROATIA
CHILDHOOD’S MAGICAL KINGDOM
By Paulo Siqueira
Prostitution is a big word, to describe what goes on on the straights of the great Amazon River of Brazil in a region privy to years of conquest and exploitation. The life of the river people or “Ribeirinhas”as they are
CROATIA
CHILDHOOD’S MAGICAL KINGDOM By Petra Mrša “They are wild and magical, as if they came from some different planet”, said American photographer Nan Goldin about children, a subject she loved photographing. These images tell the story of the growing up of Lovro, Croatian photographer Petra Mrša’s nephew. The magnetic appearance of that child in his kingdom is a coulisse for uncovering mental moods of this little being and the relations with his nearest. So we follow this kid and his mother through their everyday activities like bathing, sleeping, playing and eating, and realize how these acts create the bonds between the parent and the child from the very beginning of life. In their closeness and connectivity, besides other members of the family we can sense the presence of a third person: Lovro's little sister who will be born after the end of the photographic project. 34
Lovro and his mother on the sofa
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Lovro’s laying on the couch before going to bed
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Lovro’s 4th birthday, sitting in the grandparents backyard 37
Lovro playing with his grandmother
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Lovro in the living room 39
Sleepy Lovro stretches on the sofa at his grandmother's house
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Lovro in tears after a disappointment
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Lovro and his sister during lunch
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Lovro in the kitchen 43
Lovro, his mother and some friends playing in a river
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Lovro giving food to his father
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Lovro is getting mad because we are laughing at him
Lovro’s pregnant mother in the bathroom with Lovro playing behind her
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ISTANBUL
I LOVE GEZI PARK
ISTANBUL
I LOVE GEZI PARK By Bruno Zanzottera The trees were the first house of men. The myths on the ancestors of many peoples speak of persons who came from giant trees. In Istanbul the plane trees of Gezi Park became the symbol of the protest of the young Turks against a leader who is turning the country into a big deal for unscrupulous capitalists, who are radically changing the social fabric of the city trying to reduce its long history to a simple postcard for tourists. Facing the new pharaonic projects of strong environmental impact, such as the third bridge over the Bosphorus, an undersea rail tunnel and a canal that joins the Marmara Sea with the Black Sea, the 600 trees of Gezi Park seem a mere drop in the ocean. But they have been the drop that allowed people to dream of a different world, to overcome their divisions and believe in an utopia. Power to the imagination, the old slogan of the French May in 1968, in Gezi Park has found a new life. 48
“Those who choose to live in the capitalist world are like a fish who chooses to live in an aquarium. Warm and safe but small and limited. Who wants to be free must face the difficulties of life in the ocean.� ALP
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“Before people were afraid of being together, each group was for itself, gays with gays, Kurds with Kurds, the religious with the religious: now they are all mixed and there are no more divisions of gender, class and religion.� Cem
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“At Gezi Park colors came together and there was a large mosaic of people. We were all one body and one heart beating together. We were afraid to end up like Iran or Egypt: Taksim has given us a hope.” Gürbüz
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“Things are changing irreversibly. We found out what we can do. That our utopia is not just a dream and in the future we will be better organized.� Orhan
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“When the police started to use the gas it was like living in an earthquake. It was really scary.� Sibel
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“The nice thing was the solidarity of the people. You went out of the house and there were those who gave you hardhats, masks and lemons to protect you from gas and truncheons of the police.� Claudio
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“Are the fairies the enemies of the giants?” “No, the giants are the enemies of the fairies” “Are the fairies scared by the giants?” “No, the fairies love the giants” “Large masses of people, love their torturers” Ozgur and Zeynep
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“I remember the smiles and the faces of the people looking at you in the eye without any fear.� Volkan
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“Every morning, while I go to work I pass by Gezi Park and greet it with my hand, like an old friend. The only fear now is losing this emotion of collective rescue.� Zeynep
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GENERATION PUTIN
GOD BLESS
RUSSIA
GENERATION PUTIN
by Francesco Alesi
When St. Patrick set his feet on Irish land to preach Christianity, it is unlikely there were any Irish Travellers in sight. Almost sixteen Centuries later, the Irish Travellers is one of the strongest Catholic communities in the world.
RUSSIA
GENERATION PUTIN By Simone Cerio While the Arab spring revolutions grew out of the disregard for radical authoritarian regimes, Putin's fake democratic system has united different people with various ideologies against it. The several demonstrations against the government have made the new middle class – which consists of doctors, journalists, writers, young intellectuals, nationalists, environmentalists and Bolsheviks – a solid, close-knit group. They are all fed up with being constantly monitored and checked on social networks, blogs and websites. They can no longer stand not to be able to set up new official political groups. They're tired of rigged elections. A new revolution has just started, that of the young decabrists. And once again, just like in Mikhail Gorbacev's Perestroika times, the keyword is 'glasnost': transparency. 68
Mikhail Gorbachev as a talk show host at Dodz private TV 69
Ylia Yashin, leader of Solidarnost, one of the most interesting and active Moscovites political groups
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The Pussy Riot, a female punk rock band which became popular because of antigovernment lyrics, rehearse in their studio days before being arrested in 2012
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Alex Artemyev, an activist from the Walking without Putin group
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A Moscovite policeman
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Roman Dobrokotov, a young activist from the Walking without Putin group. He’s on the ‘instant arrest list’ in case of unauthorized demonstration
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Vera Kichanova, a young activist from Moscow State University 75
Eugenja Chirikova, a notorious anti-Putin environmentalist 76
Filippe Dzyadko, news editor for the independent, anti-government and very outspoken magazine Bolshoi Gorod
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Elena Tofanjuk, journalist for Slon magazine, in front of the Red October entrance: this is the headquarter of the most important Moscovite independent tv networks and newspapers
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A view of the Red Square
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WORLD
COMRADE KALASHNIKOV
WORLD
COMRADE KALASHNIKOV By Parallelozero photographers The son General Mikhail Kalashnikov was more proud of was not one of the four he had with his lifetime wife, but a cold, black metal thing named the AK-47. The acronym stands for Avtomat Kalashnikova, and represents one of the most popular machine guns in history, which Kalashnikov designed 67 years ago. Put in production in 1947, the Kalashnikov quickly became the Soviet Union’s top export product. Since then, it has been produced in over 100 million copies, and used by 80 armies in almost every conflict after WWII. Today, one machine gun in five on earth is an AK-47. Mr. Kalashnikov passed away at 94 on Dec 23, 2013. Since under the USSR he was never allowed patent rights, he died in poverty, though honored as a hero of the Soviet Union. At the celebrations for his 90th birthday, Russian president Medvedev said that “Kalashnikov has become one of the most famous Russian words”. He was not referring to the man, but to the instrument of death to which the man gave life. And forever his name. 81
Yerevan, Armenia. Soldiers parade on Republic Square during the celebration of Independence Day 82
An outpost of the Second military region in the liberated territory of Western Sahara
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Nzara, Southern Sudan. Two “Arrow Boys” patrol their village near the Ugandan border at night. They are part of a self defence militia against Lord’s Resistance Army’s rebel attacks 84
Tikrit, Iraq. Civilians march along a city street in early 2003, after having looted an army weapon deposit following the invasion of the Coalition forces 85
Dem. Rep. of Congo. the side of an NGO car 86
Awash region, Ethiopia. Kereyou sheperds
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Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Army soldiers in a slum of the city 88
Benghazi, Lybia. AK-47 machine guns and rocket launchers stacked in the house of a Misratah businessman supporting the rebels during the 2011 revolution 89
Ethiopia, Afar people in the Awash region
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Baghdad, Iraq. An insurgent photographed in an unknown location in the city. The apartment was used as a base by a small group of insurgents in 2004
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Yemen. Sana始a, women's police academy, recruits practice how to disassemble an AK47 machine gun blindfolded
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Benghazi, Lybia. At a cafĂŠ in the fishing port, young militiamen wait to board a fishing vessel bound to Misratah during the 2011 revolution
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Kabul, Afghanistan, Afghan soldiers shoot through the traffic on a military pickup 94
Turalei, Southern Sudan. A combatant with the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) in 2002. On his AK-47, he marked his killings in the war 95
ITALY
POINT OF U: IMMIGRATION
ITALY
POINT OF U: IMMIGRATION Readers’ photo contest Lampedusa. Italy's southernmost point. An island barely larger than its airport, lost in the middle of the Mediterranean 120 miles north of the Libyan coast. A dream. Every year, thousands of desperate migrants set sail from the Northern African shores on board overloaded and precarious boats, and attempt to cross over to this tiny island which, in their eyes, represents Europe and the chance for a new, better life. Many never make it. Those who do, soon find out that their dream is still very far from coming true. Immigration is a heavily sensitive topic in Italy: deemed an unbearable invasion by some, an undeniable right by others, it still finds a country unprepared to manage it. We asked our readers to tell their point of view on the subject by using a camera. Here are your best images. 97
by Francesco Malavoglia
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by Danilo Muratore
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by Flore Murard-Yovanovitch
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by Giancarlo Malandra
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by Emiliano Pozzoni 102
by Giorgio Barbato 103
by Maria Luisa Gioffrè
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by Ciro Battiloro
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by Paolo Maggioni
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by Paola Schillaci 107
AFGHANISTAN
WHEN THE OTHERS GO AWAY
Parallelozero Multimedia
AFGHANISTAN
WHEN THE OTHERS GO AWAY By Simone Cerio 2014 will be the year when American troops withdraw completely from Afghanistan after 12 years of war. Gino Strada has founded, along with Italian universities, a program which gives a general surgery student the chance to complete professional training in a war zone hospital managed by Strada’s Ngo Emergency. While everybody is leaving Afghanistan, some are getting ready to move there. Davide Luppi is the first Italian trainee surgeon completing his study career in Afghanistan. A risky trip, from Modena to Kabul, and a six-month stay in order to get a know-how which is difficult to obtain in Italy. A life journey, leaving love and roots behind and facing fresh emotions in a land ravaged by too many years of conflict.
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Parallelozero Srl via Donatello, 19/A Milano - Italy ISBN: 9788898512058 P’Zero #01.2014 - All rights reserved - Copyright Parallelozero 2014 www.parallelozero.com