Submission by Cosimo Calabrese:
"Taranto stands as a paradigmatic example of how economic and industrial development in Italy—particularly in the South—has often been chaotic, shaped by political complicity and clientelism, and marked by long-term, devastating consequences for local territories.
Today, Taranto is considered one of the most polluted cities in Europe. For decades, the number of people affected by pollution-related diseases has steadily increased. The industrial plant—referred to locally simply as “the factory”—was transferred from state ownership to various private administrations in the 1990s, before returning to state control in 2020. However, the structural issues responsible for its harmful emissions have never been fully resolved.
Taranto is the city where I was born and where I still live. To investigate it as a photographer has meant confronting a place to which I am deeply connected—a place that holds my family, my friends, and my personal history. In this body of work, I have attempted, as much as possible, to distance myself from my own lived experience and to approach the city with a more analytical, almost scientific perspective.
I chose to conduct this photographic investigation as if it were an autopsy—returning to the original Greek meaning of the word autopsia, “to see with one’s own eyes.” I systematically examined and dissected the streets of Taranto, searching for evidence, while remaining faithful to a photojournalistic approach grounded in direct observation and firsthand knowledge.
The project began with the superimposition of a map of Taranto and its industrial area onto an image resembling a lung tumor scan. From there, I started to conceive of the city as a living body, where the industrial expansion of the 1960s acted like a neoplastic disease: a pathology originating in a specific area and gradually spreading, over time, throughout the entire urban and social fabric".
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