Art to create social bonds

Since 2009 Reza, one of the world’s greatest photojournalists, is involved in a visionary project in Librino, a deprived suburb of Catania, Sicily. Designed in the 1960’s by the famous Japanese architect Kenzo Tange to be an ideal city, modeled after other new cities, Librino is now  ignored  by the government and the institutions. Over the course of the years it has become a symbol of decay and criminality, an area with no infrastructures and services and lack of access to education and culture.

The aim of the project  is to develop  the area, the youngest of Catania, where about 80,000 people live, and to create social bonds through raising awareness on art and on photography in particular.

Reza, born in Iran but naturalized French, has been devoted to teaching since the beginning of his career. He is holding regular photography workshops for 100 children aged 13-17 in Librino’s schools. Education to the use of the media is essential for the artist because media “are the most powerful weapons of the XXI century”.  Reza will be again in Librino to hold workshops from 19 to 25 September 2011 and in October  2011.

Antonio Presti, Sicilian arts patron who has dedicated all his life to art, is the founder of  the project. He invited Reza to join him in Librino. Reza, besides being one of the most famous photojournalists in the world, is also one of the greatest defenders of photography as a mean for social evolution. In 1991 he founded in Afghanistan AINA, an NGO committed to developing independent media and cultural expression in the country and to educating women and children through the media. Both Reza and Antonio Presti share the same vision of art meant in an ethic sense, which goes beyond pure aesthetic. The artistic action is both ethical and civic: it has to touch people and to change their lives.

The Librino project will result  in 2012 in a vast photo Museum, the Museo dell’Immagine (Image Museum), an open- air Museum because, in the vision of the project, art has to be shared by all the community, that becomes the protagonist of the artistic practice. The inhabitants of Librino are directly involved in the process: the Museum will collect the pictures of 30,000 people of the neighborhood, portrayed  by 40 Sicilian photographers trained by Reza, by the 100 children who have attended  the workshops and by Reza himself. This open- air photo Museum will also house Reza’s exhibition  Una terra, una famiglia on the main square of Librino, the Square of the Elephant. Reza is the artistic director of the Museum and will donate his exhibition to the suburb. Moreover, some of the images realized by the Iranian photojournalist  during his stay in Librino will be projected on the blind facades of the buildings.

All the portraits of the people of Librino will create  a huge  “historic archive of collective identity“, giving an answer to the issue of identity, one of the biggest  psychosocial issues of our time. Librino is a “non-place” , a place that denies identity and citizenship to its inhabitants. When all the inhabitants of Librino, seeing themselves portrayed on the facades of the buildings, will be able to recognize their beauty, Librino will not be a marginalized place anymore, but a territory where people will acquire the right to identity and  to citizenship through the awareness of the beauty.

Why did you choose Librino after having travelled all around the world?

First of all because of a very deep friendship that was born between me and Antonio Presti.  I came to know the art projects he did with his Foundation, the Fondazione Fiumara d’Arte, in Sicily in the past 25 years and in Librino since 2000 and I admired them very much. As he decided to invite a well-known  international photographer to join the Librino project by taking portraits of the people of the suburb I decided to go. Besides being a photographer, I am a teacher from the very beginning of my career. In 1983 I started training people in journalism and in the use of the media as a tool to help them to communicate. I am persuaded that the best people to tell any story are the people who are living the stories from inside.  I have always taught to orphans, street children, disadvantaged children…  Only who knows what is sufferance is able to show it with images. If you want to help people you have to train local children from schools to become photographers. For this reason I decided to teach to the Librino children: I am sure that photography can solve many problems of the peripheries.

Do you have any anecdotes  about the children you taught to?

I have always taught to my students that the most important thing in a portrait is not to take a picture of the face but to try to capture the soul of the person. One day I asked my students to go take some portraits in the market of Librino. Federico,  a student aged 11, went to take a picture of a lady, who told him: “I don’t want you to take a picture of me!” and he replied: “I am not taking a picture of you, I am taking a picture of your soul!”

What will Librino look like after you will leave?

The results of what we are doing in Librino will be tangible in ten years. I can see Librino becoming an important centre for image and photography, where many exhibitions will take place and films will be shot. Although Librino is part of Europe, and Europe is a centre of culture, its inhabitants don’t have access to culture: they don’t have cinemas, theatres, but they need them, like all people do.  As we cannot bring culture to them, we can train them, we can give them the tools, so that they can create culture by themselves.

Did you discover any talents?

The majority of the children has understood the whole concept and there are a few who are at a top level. Now they are starting to stand on their own feet: it is a process that, once it is started, can’t be stopped. After a few months’ training they will continue by themselves. The knowledge of the  social media will help them undertake creative professions.

What are your feelings towards the changes in the Arab countries?

I was in Cairo in Tahrir Square until the night Mubarak left and I saw the  joy of all the people during those 10 days. I am going to follow what is happening in the Arab countries because these are the countries where I have been working for 30 years and I have seen all their transformations. I think what is happening  is somehow related to the social media, which are the new tools of our time. All the world , not only the Arab world, is going to be under question where there are social injustices, because social media are the tools that enable people to connect in order to fight iniquities and to create a better and more just society. Through these new media people get connected and cross many existing borders and walls.

Librino is a pilot project. Do you think it will be easily replicated in other countries?

The word pilot project  has two different meanings in Western and Eastern civilizations. In Western cultures all the knowledge is based on the fact that the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line, whereas for Eastern civilizations it is a spiral, which moves in the space.

As a consequence of this, for Western cultures in order to create a pilot project you take a prototype, and if it works well you bring it to another place. For me and my culture, the Eastern culture, you have a pilot project when you get enough knowledge in applying an idea in a specific moment, place, culture and  population. Then all the complicated relation between this culture, these people and your idea will tell you how to use this experience and how to create the same situation, the same relations in another place, with the people living in that other place, adapting the idea to that specific place, to that moment.

Picture of Reza and Antonio Presti: photo credits by Fondazione Fiumara d’Arte.

On Vita Europe Channel  (go to Vita Europe’ homepage) you can watch a video  by Franco-German television Arte, realized by a team of journalists during Reza’s last training sessions in Librino.

www.librino.org