Road to new human dimensions.
Who are we really? From the people I see through a lens I can’t find just one answer. Who we are, where we are: the environment in which we live changes our way of being: how we present ourselves, interact with others, and the overall image of ourselves which we transmit.
This change is more visible in large urban centres, clusters of identities that attract us, in a process of global urbanisation, at the same time distancing ourselves from the context in which we grew up and where we formed our identity.
In cities people come from everywhere and from all walks of life: their life becomes intertwined with the urban one, through the roads, walls, and crowds of people, moving towards new possibilities of success.
I often happen to observe how, in the frenetic and hyper-stressful rhythm of big cities, where even one’s own movement and way of using leisure time end up being standardised, the anchor of an individual’s identity ends up being their smartphone. A small container of yesterday’s contacts and tomorrow’s possibilities, of the photos that have become memories and those we share to tell our story. It is the same wherever you are, New York, San Francisco or Tokyo, these are just the cities where I took the photos in this post: alone or in a crowd, the smartphone reminds us who we are even when the surrounding city, so big, and so different, makes us feel lost.
Is this urban dimension dominating individuals or vice versa? Are we active protagonists in our own change or are we just abiding to it?
This relationship between man and city is something that I wish to I investigate, again through photography, in the project “Street Diaries”.
In the upcoming weeks I will be talking about other topics while waiting to share the complete project with you. Continue to follow me here on my blog and on my Facebook and Instagram channels.
