Descrizione

Born in Italy in 1984, the work of independent photographer Antonio Theo Pini ranges from the world of documentary photography to that of art. Theo is interested in delving into social issues, circumstances, and relationships that reveal their contradictions and conflicts.

The volume narrates the journey of some migrants along the western route of Africa and the Sahel: they leave Mali, cross the Niger, arrive in Libya, and then in Europe.

For them, this race towards the mirage of a modern, civilised continent is their only chance to gain emancipation and autonomy from the lives they are trying to leave behind.

Antonio Theo Pini, photographer and narrator, traces their journey of hope, capturing it over three different moments. First, desires for fulfilment and integration merge and blur in the desert, in the struggle and loneliness of those fearing not to be welcomed as they would like beyond the horizon.

Then the torture and violence endured in Libya: they are given a voice, creating an intimate, up-close, and therefore violent portrait revealing the harshness of what they have experienced.

And finally, a reception centre in Europe. Here, however, it only seems to be the end of history, the end of the civilisation of Western culture. In these sad and bare rooms, the precariousness and sense of alienation of those who, reluctantly, inhabit them can be felt from every corner.

The subjects are objects. Their identity is merely a bargaining chip, as in a contract, in the quagmire of this society now permeated by the urge to get rich, founded on appearance and individualism.

A disposable society, where every object can be replaced instantly by something else. And, at worst, by someone else.