Man, interpersonal relationships and the search for what makes us human: “We are humans” is the central theme of the eleventh edition of Cortona on The Move, an international visual narrative festival that takes place in the Tuscan town from 15 July to 3 October 2021 with the support of Canon and Intesa San Paolo. A theme with multiple declinations, which opens up to a broad interpretation of role of contemporary photography as a still central tool for both storytelling and artistic exploration.
Many of the selected exhibitions investigate the concept of humanity by crystallizing the relationships between people, telling the filial and family emotions, but also exploring the abysses of humanity. Loud and moving, for example, the Serie Leaving and Waving at Deanna Dikeman, carried out over the course of 27 years; debilitating in its power Disclosure, work by Jonathan Torgovnik, which tells the stories of the children born in Rwanda from the rapes that occurred during the 1994 genocide; touching and perfectly adequate to the zeitgeist is instead Cora’s Courage by Gabo Caruso, a discreet look at the transition of a 7-year-old Spanish girl who does not recognize herself in the male gender that was assigned to her at birth.
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Energy Portraits
Some of the festival’s visual narratives instead focus on the human condition in the technological age. Among these it stands out Energy Portraits, a photojournalistic project by Marco Garofalo to the discovery of the countries of the South of the world where “the challenge of global access to energy is taking place”. More than 6 billion people are connected to national electricity grids, a number that corresponds to about 80% of the world population. However, there is a rest of the world in which the situation does not respond in any way to the Sustainable Development Goal number 7 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda plan, to be reached by 2030. Garofalo’s shots show the contrasts and contradictions of the places where the remaining 20% of the global population lives, where electrification has not kept pace with new technologies and where alternative solutions are invented to overcome the lack of energy infrastructures.
The Masai with his mobile phone
“I made these photos during various trips to Tanzania and Ghana, but also to South America and India”, Garofalo explained to Italian Tech during a visit to the exhibition in the opening weekend of Cortona on The Move: “They are places where the most recent communication technologies play a fundamental role, but where the infrastructures do not yet respond to energy needs of the population. And so alternative solutions are found. The paradox is that instead the technological development of devices that depend on energy has arrived and how, faster than electricity “.
In one of the photos, a Masai looks concentrated at his mobile phone in the middle of a cattle market near Longido, in the Tanzanian savannah: “For the Masai, the use of mobile phones is essential – Garofalo explains – to check the weather, to organize weddings, to sell and buy goats. Their traditional dress now has an extra pocket, just to carry the mobile phone. Which is almost always an older model, a so-called feature phone: it has a battery that lasts weeks rather than a day and a half like our smartphones. Access to new technologies, paradoxically, is one tool that these peoples need to maintain traditions. If they did not have the opportunity to communicate and do business and support themselves, many would have to leave their boma, the village, and move to the big cities “.
Family portraits
In the cover image of Energy Portraits, a man moves a solar panel to collect the last rays of the day on the tin roof of a hut. In the background you can see a typical house: “In that house I took this photo”, explains Garofalo, pointing to the portrait of a Masai family. In the foreground you notice a Mobisol branded refill tool: “It is one of the many innovative African companies that offer solar electrification systems for those who live in villages, off the grid. Where instead a network, albeit rudimentary exists, there are offers on consumption. Electricity can be booked directly from the mobile phone, and you pay by text message or other mobile payment systems “.
A kind of digitization despite everything, with a penetration of technology that even precedes what we inhabitants of the Western world now take for granted, namely access to electricity: “Traveling in these countries as a digital photographer, I realized how dependent I was on electricity. Every night I have to recharge the batteries of my cars, and I have often found myself in trouble. I had to shoot less, thinking more, to extend the camera’s autonomy. And usually during long journeys, like everyone else, I take refuge in mine smartphone, to read or to play a little. I had to unlearn this habit too, so as not to waste energy on futile activities “.
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The energetic oxymoron
Garofalo is very attached to family portraits, the cutlery that gives a frame to the story and the title of the entire project. But there is another shot, taken on the Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia, one of the most important lithium deposits in the world. On the expanse of salt a tanker runs, loaded with petrol, cutting through the shallow water of the plateau: “That photo for me represents a real energy oxymoron – he explained – petrol is the past, which crosses an expanse of the most important element for the construction of batteries, a symbol of the future of energy distribution “.
The photos of the exhibition were taken until the beginning of 2020, when Garofalo had to stop due to the pandemic: “After this project on the Global South I had planned a complementary work on the energy contradictions of the North of the world. Poland to talk about the still predominant use of coal, then move on to Denmark to describe a country that is already living in the future of energy sustainability “.
The importance of light
Garofalo’s images offer an illuminating insight (it is appropriate to say it) on the potential of the globalization of technology, but also a testimony of the profound contradictions of progress. Next to the photo of the Salar de Uyuni, there is another in which you see a hut, this time made of plastic shells that were once computer screens: “I took it in Agbogbloshie, near Accra, Ghana . It is the largest electronic waste dump in the world. Here the United States and other Western countries send old computers, telephones, electronic devices. recover copper and other still precious elements, the premises burn cables, rubber and packaging. It is no coincidence that the Accra area is one of the most polluted globally “.
During the wanderings that led to the realization of this project, Garofalo discovered that, together with the possibility of recharging the digital communication tools, it is lighting one of the most pressing needs: “I remember asking a tribal chief why, and he told me it was to ensure the safety of the inhabitants. I was surprised and asked him if they had crime problems in the savannah? He explained to me that if a house it is illuminated the lions stay away “.
Energy Portraits and the other exhibitions of Cortona On The Move 2021 can be visited in Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, until next October 3rd. The festival was realized thanks to the support of Canon Italia, visual imaging partner of the event for the fifth consecutive year, which took care of the printing of all the photos of the exhibitions
.