From representations to self-representations. Young people with a migrant background in the Sguardi Plurali photography exhibition | Cingolani | Visual Ethnography
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From representations to self-representations. Young people with a migrant background in the Sguardi Plurali photography exhibition

Pietro Cingolani

Abstract


Although Italy today is in fact a pluralistic country of multiple cultural views, its political and cultural institutions tend to represent a uniform national identity, reproducing a fixed consensus of what being Italian means. Processes of “othering” reproduce a reified concept of being Italian that excludes both young recent migrants and the children of immigrants. Structural processes of demarcation, exclusion and marginalisation are at play. This article is based on the photographic essays produced in 2021 and 2024 as part of the Sguardi Plurali (“Plural Glimpses”) project, a national competition and exhibition for photographers younger than age 35 who emigrated to Italy at a young age or were born in Italy to immigrant parents. After first analysing the rich visual materials and their accompanying text, I reflect on the contestants’ widely differing life stories, on the complex connections between migration experiences and the photographic records of it, and on the relationship between generalised representation and self-representation. I explore not only the final submissions, but the creative process itself, reconstructed through the voices of the photographers, as well as how the project came about.

Keywords


Photography; Self-representation; Migrants; Second generation; Youth

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12835/ve2024.2-175

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ISSN Print 2499-9288
ISSN Online 2281-1605
Publisher Edizioni Museo Pasqualino
Patronage University of Basilicata, Italy
Web Salvo Leo



Periodico registrato presso il Tribunale di Palermo con numero di registrazione 1/2023