Travel Notes on Torpignattara

Om Hindu Mondir. Torpignattara, 13 March, 2022

“The thing given brings a reward in this life and in the next.
Here it automatically produces for the donor something identical to itself: it is not lost, it reproduces itself; there, it is the same augmented thing that is found.”
(Marcel Mauss, “Essay on the gift”)

Travel notes of the Photographic Laboratory in Torpignattara with Fabio Moscatelli and Stefano Mirabella, in collaboration with the Octopus Studio.

 

The first two days slipped smoothly and were loaded with encounters.

We brought thirteen people into the veins of the multi-ethnic beating heart of Rome, “my” neighborhood of Torpignattara.

Some of them already knew it, because they had lived there or in any case had been there, but having confessed that always in a not in-depth way and without being able to enter into its intimate anthropological sense.

Because even the neighborhoods are like people's souls, made of facades, masks, removals, drives and the unconscious.

An in-depth study, even photographic, should always resemble – as much as possible – a psychological excavation, of its streets as well as of the people who live there.

The “perversions” of thought and sight are overcome with dialogue, giving things their right name, and getting as close as possible to the unconscious.

That is why it is a profound pleasure for me to introduce Torpignattara and the Bangladeshi community that inhabits it.

I leave to my two friends the part relating to the technique and more purely photographic, I am happy to open the doors, to communicate, to show what I have been lucky enough to see for almost fifteen years now.

On the first day, some of the guys from the workshop made fun of me and immortalized me while I was opening with the keys to one of the two Hindu temples, the large one in Via Cora. We joked about it: not everyone has the keys to borrow to open the temple for the participants to see.

Obviously, this is part of that “law of gift” that I have written about many times, which is the basis of photography for me.

What you give comes back to you and what you have been given you have to return in some way. Always.

Then those keys become the material and symbolic counterpart just as Marcel Mauss wrote in 1924, counterpart to my photographs. Our gift exchanges.

This is also what Stefano and Fabio repeat at every step.

Torpignattara. Rome, 12 March, 2022

“Islamic Institute of Rome”. Rome, 12 March 2022

 

We didn't even leave and we met a Muslim father holding his son born a few days ago.

Two words, smiles, the pride and happiness of a father, the confirmation to send him the photos, and here he is posing for us on the sidewalk of Via della Marranella.

Then the madrassas in which Bangladeshi children learn to read Arabic and the Koran, a spicy lunch and at the home of one of the friends I have known for several years, the dear Sultana who, although not in excellent health, welcomed us with tea with ginger and sweets cooked by her, in the bedroom.

Telling the story of her that I have listened to dozens of times but which is always a pleasure to listen again, because her words are the positive balance of all that we don't like in Italy and of our own people.

Before leaving I was able to do the first truly beautiful portrait of her after all these years.

 

Sultana. Rome, 12 March 2022

Then the Sushmita Sultana music school.

And there I saw one of them, who I believe will also remain a beautiful friendship, remain motionless, with the camera in his hands, entranced listening to Sushmita’s children sing. With shining eyes.

He himself, the night before, had written to me saying that this photographic laboratory would be a profound cultural journey as well as a photographic one. His gaze confirmed this.

 

Krishna and Niharika. Rome, 13 March 2022

The following Sunday began with the studio and outdoor portrait session with Krishna and Niharika, two girls from Telangana, in South India, and Shelley, a Bangladeshi friend of mine in almost wedding dresses.

From there the participants were truly lucky enough to attend an annaprasan, or the Hindu ceremony of weaning the daughter Arushi of my dear friend Sanjay. Again it was a kind gesture of him to have allowed all of us to enter the temple and be with them, for a private and solemn event. I brought him a print of the first daughter's annaprasan. Another circle that opens and closes.

 

Annaprasan Arushi. Om Hindu Mondir. Rome, 13 March 2022

A Nepalese woman smiling at us from her shop along the street.

Nepalese woman

To conclude we were guests of my little sister Mousumi, with her friend Sabine. More ginger tea and sweet just made by her.

Thirteen unknown people in a room talking and photographing.

 

Mousumi

Sabine

 

All of this would have been enough, but the best things often always come to an end.

And on the way back, on the sidewalks we walked many times this first weekend, we ran into a Bangla street food vendor, and while I was explaining to them what he did and what he was selling, he quickly pulled out some salty snacks and he offered it to them to taste.

When they insisted on paying him, he refused with his hands behind the body and a smile behind the mask.

So, what I said to them and what I will repeat until I am called to do so is valid: this is the task of photography, not only to portray to show others, but also to approach and know, get involved, challenge one's prejudices, and only when this process has begun do we begin to think of the reality that surrounds us as a continuous place for exchanging gifts.

Photography is a wonderful accident that happens in this constant circle of feelings and actions.

 

At Sultana's house

 

At Sushmita Sultana's school

Portrait session with Shelley from Octopus Studio

 

Annaprasan

 

Before leaving

Italian version