IL FUTURO STA A MARSIGLIA

(photography exhibition – 2016)

Marseille, France’s second city and a city of Phoenician origins, has always been a bridge towards the Maghreb and one of Europe’s great crossroads. For centuries, it has been shaped by the encounter of different peoples and cultures: French, Armenians, pieds-noirs, Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans and many others. A city of encounters and sometimes violent clashes, Marseille also became a place of refuge for Italians and others fleeing persecution during the years of Fascism.

Marseille is a city of contradictions, coexistence and tensions, but also a remarkable place to explore, saturated with intense colours, flavours and creativity. Its streets and walls seem to speak, constantly communicating with those who pass through them.

The photographs in this exhibition were taken in late August 2016. They cannot possibly capture the many facets of such a complex and ever-changing city, yet these snapshots may reveal something beyond what is immediately visible: its cultural richness, its social tensions, its landscapes and, above all, the energy of its people.

From the colourful murals around Cours Julien to the raw theatre of the fish market in the Vieux-Port, from groups of armed soldiers patrolling the streets to the vast terraces where people gather at sunset over a pastis, Marseille constantly shifts between beauty and unease, intimacy and spectacle.

Far from being a purely aesthetic exercise, this exhibition seeks to share the fascination that Marseille inspires while offering a few reflections on the historical moment we are living through. In many ways, the city seems to anticipate the questions that Europe will increasingly have to confront: how different identities can coexist, how cultures meet and transform one another, and how diversity can become a source of creativity rather than division.

For this reason, the future lies in Marseille. Perhaps it always has. Certainly, now more than ever.