This project was born through a thechnical experimentation on pinhole photography. This technique let the shutter speed and shooting time be longer than any other photographic technique, as in old times.
Movement and bodies become fluid and the presence of buildings remains, sometimes deserted. The project started in Venice, a city which is strongly linked with liquid. But then I realized that all cities are in movement as water and contrast between new and old appears in these images which seem to come from another era, and still are from nowadays.

Liquid city

Nightlife

Cabanyal is an historical district of the city of Valencia, an old fishers' town which has now become part of the city, distinguishably its outskirt on the beach. The area attracts a good number of tourists and the administration is currently planning to improve the potentiality of the city by extending Blasco Ibanyez Avenue to the sea and by building skyscrapers and luxury hotels all along the way. The administration banned every renewal works resulting in the owners often selling their houses or leaving them empty. The whole quarter is thus suffering from decay. The practice of demolition has been gaining popular consensus as a way to protect the district from crime and illegal drug trafficking. Some of the residents instead have been fighting for years against the demolition of their houses. The police repressed the opposition, giving way to a real urban warfare. The central government of Spain blocked the works confirming that the Cabanyal is protected by the Ministry of Culture as an heritage of cultural interest. The residents though continue their weekly meetings since their fate is not certain yet. They propose to "rehabilitate without destroying".

Cabanyal

Almost a half of the Mediterranean coast is occupied by buildings. Benidorm, on the Costa Blanca is an emblematic case of how speculation has started a process that homogenizes the identity of places, creating standards imposed from the outside rather than enhance local peculiarities. After the 60’s Benidorm has been transformed into a surreal cluster of skyscrapers directly on the beach, where tourists and foreign investors are now the majority of the population whose mother thongue is English just in the middle of Spain. The few natives call the town Beniyork, making fun of it but at the same time denouncing the ever expanding overbuilding.

Beniyork

SISMYCITY is a collective project curated by seven photographers with different and complementary experiences and competences.
SISMYCITY is a photographic project on the aftermath of the earthquake which struck L’Aquila and its surrounding area on April 6, 2009
Developed over a year by the fuori_vista association, SISMYCITY narrates what the earthquake severed and crudely showed up as the constituent elements of the city: i.e. the profound connection between building and dwelling, the system of relations between individual and collective identities on which the shared sense of common good is based.  

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Laura Fiorio