PART 5 - PROJECT 2 - REFLECTION POINTS
With the advent of tablets, but above all with the spread of smartphones, we have all been faced with a totally new way of communicating.
If in fact the tablet has not produced any paradigm shift, effectively replacing the phisical book, the smartphone has added multimedia and multi-peer communication to the voice communication, through text-chats and video-chats.
The smartphone, and before him the mobile phone with sms messages, have produced a technological revolution, but above all in the style of communication.
They have extended its reach to such an extent that today, practically everyone has the possibility of communicating everything with everyone, always.
All this has invaded the time and attention of people, changing their behavior.
It is sufficient to observe people not only in the trains, but also in the squares, in the waiting rooms, in the streets, in the car, in the buses, and we will always see them with their heads bowed on a screen, in connection with themselves or with others , but always "in another place", totally absent from the surrounding environment and in an environment that is as virtual as it is non-existent.
When we behave like this, we not only lose the feeling and the connection with what surrounds us, but we lose all those moments of real and exclusively personal life, really lived by ourselves and by nobody else.
How can we think of preserving and developing our "photographer's eye", if the first thing we give up is our own eye?
In this way, the concept we have studied, namely the camera as "mirror" or "window" loses all its meaning.
In support of these thoughts of mine I have thought of inserting some of my photos that recalls this alienation created by smartphones.
In August I had the opportunity to travel to the Greek Dodecanese archipelago (the word means "twelve islands") and the Turkish coast. Samos, in particular, is the closest Greek island to Turkey.
The geographical map and the map of the identities of this area, where the two continents are separated by a narrow channel, was politically and socially distorted when, in the face of the phenomenon of African and Syrian immigration through Turkey and towards the Greece, have manifested themselves in all their grandeur.
Turkey and the European Community have signed an agreement to manage it, and the result is seen on the island of Samos.
It is not my intention to dwell here on the facts and situations, but, if I had the chance, I would like to go back along the road of this immigration and represent it in all its facets and characteristics, beyond propaganda.
I would like to represent the world of the island of Samos, which has changed in recent years, from place to space, in which identities are remapped and redefined.
Today, in this space, the six thousand identities of the locals suffer the impact of the eight thousand identities of emigrants, and this clash will produce, in a tragic paradox, the lost of identity of a small land.
Today, in this space, the six thousand identities of the locals suffer the impact of the eight thousand identities of emigrants, and this clash will produce, in a tragic paradox, the lost of identity of a small land.
