THE OTHER ROME

The other Rome is a meeting of different persons and situations in the same city. It is the choice to belong to a world that at all costs does not wish to be a protagonist. The other Rome is a hidden city, pushed into the middle distance by the media and the eyes and lives of many of us. It includes persons who decide to concern themselves with those in need, of artists who give their services and see their art as an element of building and participation in a better society. People who know what "community".means. Intellectuals, artists, operators in the social field, and common people are the founders of "the other Rome". The Rome of ruins on the grey outskirts,and the Rome, with its ancient and modern architecture, splendid and radient. Urbanistic choices that revert to profound and valid ideals but which, after years, founder inspite of many attempts to revive them. In this city there are those who dream of transforming the Rebibbia Prison into a place where salvation is possible and where smiling is a fundamental duty. And so an archeological museum is born between walls that enclose pain and violence where the convict, centre of a penitentiary system, becomes part of a human outskirts. And there are angels of the night who bring food to those who live on the street and in the railway stations, places and "non places" of contemporary life. The eyes of a man met at the Stazione Trastevere, with his pool of urine and his dirty clothes, recalled the memory of a person who a few days after our meeting was found dead, on a cold pavement of white marble. The caravan home of a man who has at last found the warmth of life, makes us question the certainties of our safe life, but without the light that he has seen. The other Rome is an ensemble of contrasting images. The testimony of an artist of a thousand faces who has passed from the cinema of neorealism, to making our poverty known for the first time to a wealthy multicultural society. A living witness of our past and present. A journey in the images of the Piazza that most represents the new society. Made of faces and musics, colours and smells of the world: PiazzaVittorio and its market . in the images of a sensitive photographer who visits the most difficult places of the Earth. The face of a child returning from school with satchel slung on his back brown eyes and long hair dark as night who re-enters his field full of rubbish and of metal wire which surrounds it. Ever tried sniffing the air at the entrance to the gypsy camp on the Via Pontina? And that child, who is crossing through a green rusty gate, ever tried to imagine what he thinks as he crosses that threshold? I was with a camera in my hands and I had gone to photograph their "village" in the city, but that look . those eyes embarressed me, intimidated me. His image is not here and I did not wish to take it. The other Rome is day and night, is bare streets but also smiling faces that do not forget the others. It is a silent city rich in humanity which tries and manages to get on with living. It is an abstract place of feelings that brim over the deficiences of our society. It is the breath of one who dreams, come from afar, of a better life. It is the hug that we all desire.