ANNA BRENNA

Second chapter is a project I have been working on for some years end which has allowed me to get to know wonderful people. People coming from other nations, who have chosen, more or less consciously, to live in Italy.

I have chosen to start telling the stories of these people approximately two years ago, in a moment when the migrant emergency seemed to have reached the peak.

The news of thousands of dead people in the Mediterrenean sea, burst into my daily quiet life, with the strength of a pervasive suffering, like a punch in my stomach. Everywhere, even very far from the entry points of migrants into our country, refugee camps were built and improvised shelters for these fleeing people. Fleeing from wars, ethnic conflicts, persecutions or lack of essential human rights, searching for a future.

I like to think of the future in terms of improvement, civilisation and oppurtunities.

Hence the decision of representing positive stories, as proof of a concretely achieved possibility, and the choice to portrait these people in their working places or where they carry out their activities.

Agitu, Akolé, Arsène, Edda, Edo, Florentin, Gentiana, Imad, Kossi, Léon, Momo, Paul, Sun An Chi and Vicky come from different parts of the world, but they are writing the second chapter of their lives in Italy.

Someone arrived here on purpose, someone else by pure chance, someone as a clandestine, someone else with less risky systems. But all of them have decided to stay, carving out their own place and each of them in its own manner is contributing to the growth and improvement of our country writing the second chapter of their lives in Italy.

The positive strength of these images is meant to overcome prejudice and idle habit, blind towards the silent value of people of good will.