Storie di migrazione a Monza, quando la fotografia è al servizio dell’accoglienza

The name is that of a famous American television series, very popular in the eighties. But the goal has a much wider scope and with social implications of primary importance. The A-Team photographic project launches the challenge from Monza to combat prejudices about migrants . And, in order to achieve this ambitious goal, Marco Pittaluga, a photographer specialized in the portrait , creator and producer of the project, decided to focus his attention on eighteen young people . Faces and symbolic stories of those coming from Ukraine , Nigeria , Gambia and Ghana , but also from Brianza , fromMilan and Sicily , after putting at risk or revolutionized their lives, is facing the difficulties of a completely new reality. Portraits of people who can tell with their own image what are the reception and inclusion .

To unite the 18 protagonists of the A-Team project, all between 20 and 35 years, is the passion for football . The Boccaccio of Monza has brought them to join the team of the social center . A sports group enrolled in a real league of the social centers of Milan, Monza and a little of all of Northern Italy. ” Everyone is a player, together they are a team – explains Pittaluga, who lives in Monza, but began his artistic career in the Milan of the Nineties to continue in East London and continue today in the regional capital of Lombardy – the name A -Team, therefore, I chose it on the one hand for its translation into Italian and on the other hand as a reference to the well-known American TV series. Meaning is the strength in unitybecause everyone in the football field is the same. Nobody is a stranger – he continues – I have immortalized their smiles, their hopes “.

The 18 photographic portraits for the moment are visible on the site of the creator and producer of the A-Team project. But it is not said that soon they can not reach the public in a physical place and not just virtual. ” Coming soon the portraits could be exhibited in Milan and Monza – announces Pittaluga – I am at work in this direction, but it is still to be seen”. The interest, beyond the topic of integration and the reception of migrants, which is very relevant in this historical epoch, should not be missing. If only because sport and art have often proved to be powerful engines of important social changes . This is demonstrated, for example, by the boxer Muhammad Ali, who fought for the civil rights of African Americans, or, in the seventies, the ability of the so-called  ping pong diplomacy  to open more relaxed relations between the United States of America and China. And what about the Beatles phenomenon and Bob Dylan’s songs for the emancipation of young people and the affirmation of their rights in the 1960s ? These days the sign on History, which can leave two seemingly frivolous activities, such as sport and art, is evidenced by the possible participation of some skaters from North Korea at the next Winter Olympics, scheduled in Pyeongchang, South Korea, from February 9th to 25th. That’s why in a project like the A-Team values ​​are at stake that go far beyond art and any sporting results. “The team – explains Pittaluga – is a simple metaphor of what perhaps people, men, should be in everyday life”.

Art, in this case photography, can go hand in hand with the University world . And so, the “Cervelli Permanenti” project was  created by Pittaluga himself in collaboration with the University of Milan-Bicocca , to give voice to the faces of academic research of a university, which in Monza has its  Department of Medicine and Surgery with 7 three-year degree courses and 5 master’s degree courses ( read here ). ” I wanted to portray 14 researchers, one for each Department of the University of Milan-Bicocca– Clarifies Pittaluga – it is about Italians and foreigners, who work in our country. The portraits will be exhibited until 9 February in the Great Hall of the Milanese university – he continues – it is the first review of a path that could involve other universities “.