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The Dream is Over
The Dream is Over
Fabio Bucciarelli
April 20, 2017
"I have focussed on documenting the causes and consequences of this mass exodus for the last five years. My work took me from the Italian island of Lampedusa to Syria, to Turkey, to Iraq, to Egypt, Serbia, Macedonia and the small, Greek island of Lesbos, where boats full of people arrived. My project is titled The Dream, because, without a dream, it is unlikely that these people would set out on this incredible and dangerous journey in search of security.
In 2016 The Dream project became a book - published by FotoEvidence - and an exhibition that has toured several cities, from the Bronx Documentary Centre in New York to the Synthesis Gallery in Sofia. I was very glad to see so many people - even in countries with strong policies against immigration issues - interested in going deeper than the stereotype ideas and images of the refugee crisis.
But usually people who visit exhibitions in galleries or museums come from the middle classes and have a basic education. My interest was to bring the reality of the migrants into people’s lives, to provoke an interaction with the general public in order to create a participatory project.
With this idea, I decided to bring The Dream to Pineto, my home village in the Abruzzo region of Italy. With the help of the municipality, we printed huge photographs and installed them inside the underground passageways leading to the sea: places where people are just passing through, a metaphor for the places refugees are passing through during their journey.
Over the following days we organized a special panel and interviews with migrants; the refugee crisis has become a widespread argument among the village’s population; but within days, most of the photographs on display had been damaged, snatched from the walls and destroyed – sometimes with racist slogans or graffiti.
I finalize the project by taking pictures of the destroyed photos to document the people’s reaction and to propose a collective reflection on current immigration policies."
Further information about the project:
thedream.fabiobucciarelli.com
In 2016 The Dream project became a book - published by FotoEvidence - and an exhibition that has toured several cities, from the Bronx Documentary Centre in New York to the Synthesis Gallery in Sofia. I was very glad to see so many people - even in countries with strong policies against immigration issues - interested in going deeper than the stereotype ideas and images of the refugee crisis.
But usually people who visit exhibitions in galleries or museums come from the middle classes and have a basic education. My interest was to bring the reality of the migrants into people’s lives, to provoke an interaction with the general public in order to create a participatory project.
With this idea, I decided to bring The Dream to Pineto, my home village in the Abruzzo region of Italy. With the help of the municipality, we printed huge photographs and installed them inside the underground passageways leading to the sea: places where people are just passing through, a metaphor for the places refugees are passing through during their journey.
Over the following days we organized a special panel and interviews with migrants; the refugee crisis has become a widespread argument among the village’s population; but within days, most of the photographs on display had been damaged, snatched from the walls and destroyed – sometimes with racist slogans or graffiti.
I finalize the project by taking pictures of the destroyed photos to document the people’s reaction and to propose a collective reflection on current immigration policies."
Further information about the project:
thedream.fabiobucciarelli.com
ALL IMAGES ON THIS PAGE: © Fabio Bucciarelli
Fabio Bucciarelli+-
Italian, European and photographer. During his travels, he rubs salt into open wounds, reporting on the forgotten, threatened countries and peoples of the world. In 2012 he received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his war reportage on Syria; in addition he was a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2012 and 2015. He works freelance for Time, Le Monde, The Guardian and Stern, among others. His series is titled The Devastating Human Cost of Famine and Cholera in South Sudan and was taken with a Leica Q. More
