Milane zone five
Photography
DATE
COMMISSION
LOCATION
Il tempo che passa (excerpt from the text by Marco Belpoliti)
A certain day some time ago Antonino Costa went to live in via Boffalora, a street located between Barona, Famagosta and Gratosoglio. Suburbs of Milan, one of those areas where the city ends and the countryside begins, or at least it should begin, because sometimes it doesn't happen.
A place with big buildings, ditches and rivers, overpasses, concrete plinths, old railing houses, meadows. There, the old faces the new, which will soon be inexorably ruined: the new is already worn, worn out, decrepit. It is a hybrid zone, a zone of mixtures, a zone of solitude and strange encounters.
With his camera, Antonino Costa went around. He is attracted by minimal and minor things. He shoots and then writes. It is the "Fotogiornale": photographs and words. A personal and private journal exposed in public.
On the Carlesca irrigation ditch, a child sits on the concrete parallelepipeds that line the water: a large pipe, and behind it, beyond the concrete beam, the side of the road, beyond the grasses that grow wild, there are metal chimneys and silos. All is abandonment and forgetfulness, as if the gods have fled this place. Instead, there are men and women. Like the gypsies in single file in the snapshot that shows them heading who knows where (along paths, fields, bike paths), wearing overalls and the jersey of number 10: Del Piero.
Then the elderly at the bar: cigarette in hand, glasses resting on their foreheads, a perplexed look. Everything seems worn in these shots, yet it is all true. Antonino Costa photographs the life that passes, that flows, that doesn't stop. Not the one that is in a hurry, but the one that walks, and sometimes stops. A life like this.
At the Chiesa Rossa, the man in the short-sleeved T-shirt in front of the altar of the Madonna. What is he doing? Is he praying? Probably yes. This scattered humanity visits churches and turns to the divine: it seeks intercession. This is also how Antonino Costa photographs: through intercession (intercedere: "to pass through"). He intervenes on behalf of this humanity, he passes through it.
A certain day some time ago Antonino Costa went to live in via Boffalora, a street located between Barona, Famagosta and Gratosoglio. Suburbs of Milan, one of those areas where the city ends and the countryside begins, or at least it should begin, because sometimes it doesn't happen.
A place with big buildings, ditches and rivers, overpasses, concrete plinths, old railing houses, meadows. There, the old faces the new, which will soon be inexorably ruined: the new is already worn, worn out, decrepit. It is a hybrid zone, a zone of mixtures, a zone of solitude and strange encounters.
With his camera, Antonino Costa went around. He is attracted by minimal and minor things. He shoots and then writes. It is the "Fotogiornale": photographs and words. A personal and private journal exposed in public.
On the Carlesca irrigation ditch, a child sits on the concrete parallelepipeds that line the water: a large pipe, and behind it, beyond the concrete beam, the side of the road, beyond the grasses that grow wild, there are metal chimneys and silos. All is abandonment and forgetfulness, as if the gods have fled this place. Instead, there are men and women. Like the gypsies in single file in the snapshot that shows them heading who knows where (along paths, fields, bike paths), wearing overalls and the jersey of number 10: Del Piero.
Then the elderly at the bar: cigarette in hand, glasses resting on their foreheads, a perplexed look. Everything seems worn in these shots, yet it is all true. Antonino Costa photographs the life that passes, that flows, that doesn't stop. Not the one that is in a hurry, but the one that walks, and sometimes stops. A life like this.
At the Chiesa Rossa, the man in the short-sleeved T-shirt in front of the altar of the Madonna. What is he doing? Is he praying? Probably yes. This scattered humanity visits churches and turns to the divine: it seeks intercession. This is also how Antonino Costa photographs: through intercession (intercedere: "to pass through"). He intervenes on behalf of this humanity, he passes through it.
