DAVIDE FERRARIO: Pictures from Jail
Porta Sant’Agostino, Bergamo
9 March – 9 April2007
Private View with Davide Ferrario: 8 March 2007, 6 p.m.
The
exhibition features 60 pictures taken in 2002 by director – and at the
time debutant photographer – Davide Ferrario. During the summer of that
year, the direction at San Vittore prison (Milan) decided to renovate their
fourth and fifth rows. More than 800 people used to live in those overcrowded
cells, awaiting a verdict. Ferrario was allowed to get into the emptied rows
before the renovation started. He brought a camera with him and for a whole
day took pictures of those walls, and the stories they usually hide. He took
pictures of hope and despair, capturing traces of life and waiting in those
narrow, decaying spaces.
Architects Davide Pagliarini and Francesco Decandia from New Landscapes Studio prepared a special scenery for the exhibition, reflecting on the complex relationship between life in jail and the outer world. Ferrario’s pictures hang on concrete walls, and visitors must get inside narrow corridors to watch them, so that the pictures are displayed on appropriately barren walls. Slits in the walls let people catch glimpses of Ferrario’s pictures from the outside, whereas visitors who are inside watching the pictures feel watched by those outside. The inner area of the exhibition hall is devoted to meetings, public debates and the film projections which will be part of a series of events on the topic “Jail is not the only way to justice”.
The exhibition, made in cooperation with Lab80, “Carcere e Territorio”
Committee, the City and Province of Bergamo and Mazzotta publishing house,
will be held at Sala della Porta, Porta Sant’Agostino, Città
Alta (old town). A catalogue will be published by Mazzotta.
Film Exhibition and Book Presentation
9 March-5 April: a related series of events on the topic “Jail is not
the only way to justice” will take place at Sala della Porta, Porta
Sant’Agostino, Città Alta (the old town in Bergamo).
Eight films (documentaries and productions made by penitentiary inmates during
their documentary film training courses) will be screened at the exhibition
hall. Each film concerns life in Italian prisons, the possibility of social
and local reintegration, and the experience of social workers taking part
in these projects. Two books on “cooking in jail” will also be
presented by Millepiani and Valli Orobiche Slow Food associations, while a
collection of poems and tales written by Bergamo prison convicts will be presented
by “Centro Territoriale Permanente E. Donadoni”.
