BROOKLYN BUZZ

"Brooklyn Buzz" is the inaugural chapter of "The Buzz Project." It was conceived and shot in Brooklyn, New York, US 2010. The Buzz Project represents a symbolic portrait of the contemporary metropolis and its inhabitants, as seen through the moving frame of the public bus window. "The Buzz Project" is a monumental body of photographic work centered on the contemporary metropolis, the urban environment, and its infinite layers of reality and humanity. I have been carrying out this project with co-author and photojournalist Alessandro Cosmelli, for ten years (2010-2020), taking photos from the windows of public buses in ten iconic cities around the world (Brooklyn, New York; São Paulo, Brazil; Milan, Italy; Havana, Cuba; Istanbul, Turkey; Mumbai, India; Mexico City, Mexico; Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; and Miami, Florida). The work is conceived as a multi-series documentary project, with the ultimate goal of capturing a complex and multifaceted portrait of urban life and contemporary issues such as urbanization, social inequalities, and environmental conditions. The choice of the bus becomes a statement of purpose. A powerful democratic symbol in itself (bus is short for omnibus, “for all,” in Latin) and a ubiquitous element of the global urban landscape, the bus and its route become markers of a metropolis’s social level of (in-)equity and its (un-)sustainable growth pattern. "The Buzz Project" series is an ambitious attempt at documenting the contemporary urban ecosystem and its dwellers: the urbanites and the urbanized, as they live, prosper, or simply survive in both compact and sprawling habitats around the world. More than this, "The Buzz Project" is an invitation to activate an otherwise dormant inner vision and open the eyes of consciousness on the “beauty” of everyday life, which can be pervasive even along the sidewalks of a city’s concrete expanse. "The Buzz Project" is a work-in-progress that aims to build a visual narrative with multiple new editions: it is simultaneously a subjective vision and a universal document constructed to ask unanswerable questions and encourages more profound reflection on the present and the near-future state of the human condition.