‘Spring/Summer 2008’ is a series
of portraits showing Senegalese beach vendors at the Tuscan coast. The
title of this project is connected to the seasonal fashions that year-by-year
fuel the desire to own and display the latest trendy clothes and accessories.
For this project, we met and studied the people who are forced to work
on the edge of today’s consumer society. The Senegalese are the
primary ethnic group that migrates to Italy and lives here without legal
status. (They are joined by Romanians, Albanese, Moroccans and Chinese,
as well.)
One main reason they are here is because of a fishing crisis in Senegal,
which is a result of the globalization of the fishing towns into vacation
resorts.
Since most immigrants are not protected by any social security system,
neither from their home countries, nor from the Italian immigration policy,
they are forced to resort to cheap and illegal labor. These street vendors
are called "Vu' cumprà” a malapropism of their pronunciation
of the daily question "Vuoi comprare?" (Would you like to buy?).
Especially cheap copies of famous brands and luxury products, such as
handbags, T-shirts, sunglasses and belts, sell well on the beaches. The
vendors are hunted by the police — and loved by the bargain-hunting,
fashion-conscious tourists.
This series plays off a classical aesthetic of fashion photography, showing
the vendors in the unusual positions of models who could come directly
from the cover page of a magazine. However, the models‘ faces are
never visible. The person disappears in disguise: men and women in-between
loud advertising, hiding their existence in illegality.
— Gianmaria Gava
FeatureSpring Summer 2008Illegal street vendors in Tuscany are photographed hiding behind the counterfeit fashion items that the tourists love to buy at bargain prices. Photographs by Gianmaria Gava.View Images
Feature
Spring Summer 2008
Illegal street vendors in Tuscany are photographed hiding behind the counterfeit fashion items that the tourists love to buy at bargain prices. Photographs by Gianmaria Gava.
Spring Summer 2008
Illegal street vendors in Tuscany are photographed hiding behind the counterfeit fashion items that the tourists love to buy at bargain prices. Photographs by Gianmaria Gava.
Trending this Week
Teen Tribe
Martine Fougeron documents the delicate, turbulent stages of adolescence through intimate portraits of her own children’s lives.
Announcing the Winners! LensCulture Journeys 2020
Discover 37 international photographers recognized for their unique and timely interpretations of the theme, Journeys.
26 Black-and-White Photography Favorites from LensCulture
LensCulture’s editors revisit 26 of the most popular recent articles that feature black-and-white photography – portfolios, essays, interviews, exhibitions and book reviews.
The Americans
This is the photo book that redefined what a photo book could be — personal, poetic, real. First published in 1959, Robert Frank’s masterpiece still holds up — the selection of photos, and their sequence and pacing is fresh, rich, generous, and...
Of Poetry and Magic
Munem Wasif has honed his monochromatic way of visually interpreting the world. This juror for LensCulture’s Black and White Awards reveals the details that affect him most through the language of photography.
From Labyrinth
Delving into the uncertainty felt by his generation, Iranian photographer Farshid Tighehsaz’s gritty monochrome images penetrate the fears and tensions of the collective unconscious.
Related
Tin Tribes in the Garden of Ether
The 19th-century technique of wet-plate collodion is used to great effect in this series that exposes contemporary “tribes” which express their political, social, personal causes through distinctive fashions.
Rolling Stone to Christopher Street: 30 Years of Portraits
Rolling Stone’s former chief photographer Mark Seliger discusses his current series, “On Christopher Street,” while offering invaluable advice for aspiring portrait photographers.
Limbs
Steering away from often problematic, graphic imagery of war, these reflective ‘portraits’ of prosthetic limbs found in Afghanistan speak to the civilian experience of conflict.
Wastelands
Dan Dubowitz travels the world in search of abandoned, decaying buildings. He finds beauty in many of these spaces, and he documents them lovingly with his medium-format camera.
The Last Moment
Today, everything and anything can prompt somebody to take a picture, to capture a fleeting memory, to record an event (whether potentially historic or totally mundane) — here is one serious photographer’s investigation into this global...
Landmasses and Railways
Everything is a mystery in this novel-length nearly wordless artist’s book by Bertrand Fleuret— and there is probably no unraveling the mystery except to experience it with pleasure. An incongruous sequence of black-and-white images seem...