#onchain
About this series
Macroeconomic changes of the last decades have had a profound impact not only on society but also on the spatial reorganization of the territory. In today's cities distance hasn't just a geographical meaning, but also a social and economic one.
Peri-urban areas have taken on the appearance of huge endless suburbs, a phenomenon known as 'Mancha Urbana' in Spanish countries. The topic of suburbs and people who live on the periphery is becoming social economically more and more important.
This is the first part by Valentino Bellini of an ongoing project documenting this topic on some of the biggest cities in Latin America.
Interview
What first drew you to make a documentary about suburbs—and why did you start with La Paz?
I have always thought of the city as the highest expression of both social and technological development of the human being. An extremely complex system that contains the expression of the most varied branches of knowledge and the most appropriate means for use.
I have been interested in the whole city organism and its development since when I was very young, when I started playing for the first time with the mythical video game SimCity (and I continue still today to "play" with powerful cities simulators). From there my interest grew to bring me to study urban and environmental planning at the university. Over time I studied the city from a more academic point of view, and when I started being a photographer I simply changed the process that I was using to understand this important phenomenon.
The series La Mancha Urbana was born when I found myself living for a few months in Mexico City and I encountered a city dimension that I had never lived in first person, being originally from a small city, especially when compared to population standards of large Latin American metropolises. Mexico City has about 10 times the area and 36 times the population of Palermo, my hometown. Housing density is one of the biggest challenges for the modern city.
Experiencing this impressive development of the city and its consequent pressure on the surrounding natural environment led me to want to study the phenomenon more broadly in Latin America, trying to visually render this aggression and this unscrupulous absorption of the natural environment caused by the continuous advancement of Anthropization.
The idea of the project is to document the status quo of urban expansion in these metropolises to ask ourselves what future we are building in this sense, how often our way of occupying the planet is shortsighted and counterproductive, and on what good practices could be to change direction and be able to reach a more sustainable development path, especially for the environments that represent the home of our communities.
Mexico City was the first stop and then I shot in La Paz which is an interesting and particular reality in itself, as it is the highest capital in the world with logistical challenges that this entails, as well as being historically one of the poorest nations of Latin America.
When did you start the series and when you are out shooting—how much of it is instinctual versus planned?
Normally before traveling to shoot there is a study phase in which I also try to take into consideration what will be the most significant places visually and aesthetically to represent what is the focal point of the project, that is, scenes in which there is a contrast between the natural environment and the man-made environment or more simply in which it is possible to perceive the impact of man on the environment.
Normally this happens through long surveys carried out with Google Maps, during which I select a whole series of places that I will then visit once on site. But in reality, however detailed this previous phase may be, in all the trips I have faced for this project, being on the spot and above all collaborating with local people and experts on the subject certainly helps you a lot to deepen and understand the state of things, and to discover places that otherwise I would have hardly found.
What challenges did you experience during the documentary in La Paz?
La Paz is not an easy city. As mentioned, it is the highest capital in the world and the altitude was a considerable challenge for me as I was not used to it at all. It is a city that was born in a valley but which over time has eroded all the space around it until expanding today on the surrounding mountains. It was a very physical and tiring job. Other than this I found a community really willing to welcome me and help me in my work.
Did you shoot this series on film or digital?
I shot the series in Mexico City as well as this one in La Paz with film cameras. The first with a 4x5 folding camera, and the second with a medium format camera. What I like the most about film is the workflow, being necessarily slower and more selective, is very helpful to learn to think, and develop the idea behind the image more than the photo itself.
Unfortunately, the main strength of digital is, in my view, at the same time its main limitation. The speed and ease with which we can produce images in a digital environment absolutely does not push us to prior reflection, but engulfs us in a bulimic process of producing images that often lack meaning as well as aesthetic depth. Unfortunately, due to the increase in film prices, I had to opt for a digital camera to shoot the third part of the project, the one in Bogota.
Fortunately I had the opportunity to use a medium format digital camera (provided to me for the job by the manufacturer) which from a technical point of view has little to envy to analog camera systems I have used in the past, although it is an approach, an experience and a significantly different aesthetic result.
When do you plan to release the second part of La Mancha and which city will it be?
I have decided not to release the chapter on Mexico City yet because I would like to go back to photograph there. I feel that the photographs I took in 2014 do not do justice to a reality as complex as that of the Mexican capital. It will probably be the third installment and will be finished in the coming months.
The second part of the project will be released shortly. It will be the one about the Colombian capital, Bogota, which I shot between May and June of this year. Right now I am finalizing everything for the creation of the smart contract with Manifold and afterwards I will proceed to minting the images. Although I will probably postpone the listing for a while.
At the same time I am working on expanding the virtual installation of the project on Oncyber. At the moment there is a first part related to the series on La Paz. And soon I’ll expand it with the chapter about Bogotà. I’m working to build a multi-disciplinary exhibition including, in addition to my photographic work, also other contents of a different nature such as maps, essays or infographics, in order to be able to delve into this issue as much as possible and offer visitors the possibility to really understand the context. For this reason I have already activated collaborations with researchers and professors of urban planning in some of the cities involved.
What are some of your favorite books on photography – and what about them do you love?
Imperial Courts by Lana Dixemberg is one of the recents books that I love the most. Portraiture is for me probably the most interesting language in photography, and the way she uses it to follow the evolution of a community over more than 20 years is one of the most successful works of social documentation made with photography.
The design of the book itself is very interesting, showing you all the connections between all the members of the community over the time. There is also a beautiful web documentary on line of this body of work by the same Dana Lixemberg and Eefje Blankevoort with a lot of audio and video contents recorded throughout the years in the community.
Another all time favorite book of mine is Discordia by Moises Saman. It is a body of work about the Arab Springs in which the author definitively elevates photojournalism to art. A powerful book, representing dramatic scenes with a rare sensitivity. And in which the contribution of innovative languages of representation is not lacking, such as the colleges that abstract the faces and bodies of the protagonists and give them an importance of fundamental meaning and aesthetics. For this book Saman collaborated with artist Daria Birang who curated the editing, design and the collage works. A real book design masterpiece.
And the last one I want to highlight, because I think it really is a magnificent body of photographic work is A Myth of Two Souls by Vasantha Yogananthan. In this massive, 7-books project, he uses a mix between documentary style and staged photography to create his own epic journey, taking inspiration from the history and the imagery of the Ramayama, an important epic poem of the Hindu mythology. Published by a publishing house founded by the same author, it is an extremely interesting book especially for the variety of techniques used and for the study and attention to color. The photographs are taken with a 4x5 camera. Are shot in color for the landscapes while the portraits are shot in black and white and then hand painted by an Indian artist following his sensitivity and imagination.
The visual identity of this work was curated by the dutch duo Kummer & Herrman, who have already curated the design for many other great photo book projects, like The Sochi Project by Rob Hornstra and Arnold Van Bruggen, one of my favourite documentary photo projects of all time.
New Project Outlook
Valentino Bellinis new project GOZOVITAL is a research study on the language of environmental portraiture in collaboration with bondage rigging master Milo Goez performing in some special locations in Colombia. The series is also a portraiture project that talks about contrasts, which we all experience in our life and which are the quintessence of our nature as human beings.
'I'm really interested in the interaction of the subject and the environment that he is living at the time of the shot. In this case the interactions is even more accentuated by the proformance Milo put in place,' states Bellini to DRAWLIGHTS.
Artist Bio
1984 born photographer Valentino Bellini lives and works in Palermo, Italy. He graduated at CFP R.Bauer of Milan in 2010. His work has been featured on L'Espresso, The Guardian, The Financial Times Weekend Magazine, The Washington Post, and Al Jazeera among others.
Photographer: Valentino Bellini
Twitter: @ducciok
Instagram: @valentino.bellini
Foundation: @ValentinoBellini
Photos copyright Valentino Bellini
Supported by Jenny Metaverse.
The Jenny collection contains almost 200 works of modern and contemporary art.
DRAWLIGHTS | 1/1 – one post/one photographer, weekly. Off-chain and on-chain. By Peter Nitsch, lens-based artist, a member of Jenny Metaverse, RawDAO and lifetime Member of the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand.
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