‘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
Wilted
Inspired by the subjectivity of storytelling, photographer Dylan Hausthor creates images that question and bring to light the frenetic nature of visual memory.
Announcing the Winners & Finalists – 2018 Street Photography Awards!
Four Sisters, 40 Years: Nicholas Nixon Video Interview
Once a year, for 40 years, the Brown sisters have had their portrait taken—listen to the photographer speak about this simple, yet amazing series of photographs.
Lord of the Mangrove
Amidst the roots of the tallest mangrove trees in the world, young concheros (or shell pickers) hunt for the precious black shells that will support their families. Felipe Jacome has photographed this practice for a decade.
El Sueno: An Americano Project
Toothbrush? Non-essential. Soap, too. Shoelaces: dangerous contraband. At the U.S. Border Patrol facility in Arizona, we discover the scant belongings of attempted immigrants who were apprehended in the desert, seized on their path towards...
Nothing Added, Nothing Removed
Splicing and rearranging the subjects depicted in vintage flea market finds, photographer Kensuke Koike reformats discarded memories into intriguing and precise abstract works.
Related
Till the Cows Come Home:
County Fair Portraits
County Fair Portraits
Dan Nelken takes a long loving look at the competitions at county fairs in America, and gives us a gift of early 21st century rural Americana, circa 1998 - 2007.
Portraits
Jody Ake creates portraits, nudes, still lifes and landscape images using the wet collodion process, an historic photographic technique which involves using a large format camera, glass plates, and hand-mixing all of the necessary chemicals for...
Presence and Vulnerability in Photography
One of the recent Magnum nominees, Diana Markosian brings a fresh, sensitive approach to documentary photography—learn more about this dynamic image-maker.
Out of Season
Wildwood, New Jersey—once, one of the great holiday get-aways in the United States. Today, its unchanged mid-century architecture pays tribute to another era, to five decades of summers gone by.
“We Hold the Power to Shift Perceptions”—Aida Muluneh on the Photographer’s Purpose
The founder of the first international photography festival in East Africa (and an artistic force herself) explains her own daring use of primary colors while calling upon us to help increase diversity in the photography world.
Vale: Uneasy Visions of the English Landscape
Romantic landscapes set in the South West of England—home of Arthurian legends—laced with contemporary unease. Fiction, document, feeling and place are all rolled together in this nuanced set of images.