An Italian project on the shores of the Lake Tukana in Kenya, is trying to protect and document the linguistic heritage of the El-molo, the smallest African tribe still existing.
For more info: elmolorenaissance.com
The Motel, an American institution, was invented in 1925. Originally intended to stimulate business travel along the highways of the nation, Motel culture reached its height in the 1960’s as their popularity among vacationing American families increased. Complete with swimming pools and rooms modeled after Native American tee pees, they made cross-country road travel for the country’s middle class possible and became a stark symbol of capitalist America. Today, many motels across America are serving as a permanent home for millions of Americans caught in the flux of the “Great Recession”. Some have lost their jobs and their homes to foreclosure, or just can’t quite generate enough income afford an apartment. They are one step above homelessness, living on the fringe in an unstable world of linoleum and polyester bed spreads.
For over 50 years the Nicolas have been successfully specializing in the conservation and restoration of modern and ancient paintings on canvas, detached frescoes, wood panel paintings, wooden and stone statues. On September 2011, with some of the 35 highly-qualified restorers part of their team, Guido and his wife Maria Rosa went to L’Aquila to take care of a great piece of art survived to the earthquake and offered their help to restore it. This painting, “La prova della vera croce” by the 15th century painter Giulio Cesare Bedeschini, was lying wrecked inside the church of Santa Maria del Suffragio, one of the churches most seriously affected by the quake. Once they had recovered it, they brought it
to their atelier in Piedmont where it is currently being restored at their expenses.
We’ve been documenting step by step all the stages of this delicate work - the recovery, the transportation, the analysis - along 9 months of restoration process.
The area of Western Sahara which is not under Moroccan occupation celebrated this year the 35th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. But it was an unhappy celebration as Morocco is obstructing the referendum that should decide whether the former Spanish colony, where Moroccan army has established since 1976, will proclaim its independence or integration with the occupying country. The United Nations mission, which is in charge of organizing the referendum, seems to make a weak impact on the situation. As a consequence of the neverending waiting – the official cease-fire plan dates back to 1991 – it's getting more and more difficult for the senior staff of the Polisario Front to control the discontent. An increasing number of young people, tired of living in refugee camps in Algeria, are planning to resume hostilities.
How many times can you die? How many can you be reborn? And how many can you change, to the point of being unrecognizable even to your family? Mohaned, a young Iraqi, has been everything from a DJ to a small businessman, to a soldier in the Iraqi Army, to a an armed man whom at some point would have been identified as an insurgent, to an employee of the Italian embassy in Baghdad, to an interpreter wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, to a refugee in Italy, to a father and a divorced husband, and, finally, back to an interpreter with the U.S. forces. In 2003, he was a solar young boy. Seven years later, he is an alcoholic, whose hair went grey too soon and who sleeps every night with a Kalashnikov by his side, terrified by the possibility of being executed as a traitor. This is the story of the last seven years of his life.
Father Jean-Pierre was the custodian monk of the monastery during the kidnapping and killing of the seven monks of Tibhirine, in Algeria, on March 1996. Together with father Amédée, they were the only survivors of the slaughter which, after 15 years, is still shrouded in mystery. But the memory of Tibhirine and the killed monks goes well beyond the political matters of the civil war and the Islamic terrorism. It survives thanks to books and movies, but especially through the direct words of Jean-Pierre, the last living monk. Father Jean-Pierre, together with Amedée – who died two years ago –, has left Algeria in order to continue his monastic life on the highlands of the Atlas in Morocco, where Trappists have moved their “Notre Dame of the Atlas” new monastery. Jean-Pierre is nowadays the last connection between these two places.
On February 17th, the Libyan revolution has started. Parallelozero photojournalist Alessandro Gandolfi has covered the event shooting a series of reportages in the country. Beyond the subjects depicted in these photos, we have other available text-and-pics stories on the women of the revolution, the new Libyan media, the destroyed villa of Qaddafi, the exodus of the alien workers from the country and on the Ras Lanuf refinery, being bombed these days by the government army, which never before had been photographed inside.
They are few, selected and extraordinarily well trained. They chose a life of risk, but, unlike the Oscar-winning movie’s main character, do not feel like joking about death, which took away many of their colleagues. Their code name is IEDD, an acronym that stands for “improvised explosive device disposal”: they are the bomb specialists of the Italian Army, based all over Western Afghanistan. Considered among the world’s best, they use the most advanced technologies, and are forced to update almost daily against an insurgency using explosive devices that day after day turn out to be more sophisticated, creative, and lethal.
Parallelozero stands out in the international market with reportages shot by our experienced photojournalists all over the world. In photojournalism documenting areas of crisis, as well as in geographical and anthropological photography, the narration of places is deeply linked to the people who live there, to urban dwellings, social communities, and the private lives of individuals: in one world, to stories. Parallelozero was also among the first editorial companies producing multimedia reportages. “The medium is the message” wrote Marshall McLuhan. A concept that fits perfectly into Parallelozero’s multitasking vision. Our in-depth, documentary-style reportages are made with texts, pictures, video footage and soundtracks. They are communication products in which our core business, the photographs, maintain all their visual and expressive force, that of an instant frozen in time, but are immensely enriched by the fluidity of video and the emotional power of sound.
Every year, at least 50,000 girls travel from Nigeria (mostly from Benin City, one of the country’s poorest cities) to Europe. A trafficker, with the help of a voodoo, or juju, priest, managed to convince them that a decent job awaits them in the promised land. The journey is often nightmarish, trying to reach the coast of Italy or Spain on a precarious rubber boat. Many of the girls die of fatigue or drown at sea before reaching their destination. Those who make it, soon realize that the promised job does not exist: after their papers are seized by the traffickers, they are sent on the street as prostitutes. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the government and an Ngo run by nuns are fighting to set these 21st Century slaves free: from their masters, as well as from the naivete that makes them so vulnerable.
Ramallah is changing. In the West Bank's main city, money, invested by the Palestinian diaspora, is flowing. Shopping centres, restaurants and buildings, where an apartment can cost up to 12 thousand dollars per square meter, are springing up everywhere. Luxury cars have appeared on the roads. The artistic side of things is also in ferment, thanks to new bands, dance schools and the most avant-garde disc jockeys and graffiti artists. And all this in spite of the wall built by Israel, which surrounds the city and makes it, as its inhabitants call it, “an open-air prison”. Run by a very special mayor. A Roman Catholic. And a woman.
Naples, the city with the highest level of criminal activity in Italy, counts seventy homicides, four thousand armed robberies, mostly with tourists as victims, and thousands of thefts a year. In order to combat the criminal elements, who are often secreted in the intricate lanes which don’t allow vehicles easy passage, the police force has created the Hawks (Falcons), a squadron which is practically unique: plain clothes agents who patrol the street in powerful off road motorbikes, their mission: to control and where possible prevent criminality. This is a risky mission which not occasionally brings them encounters with the Camorra and which makes them as they as they define themselves “moving targets on two wheels”.
Just like the aoidos (bards) in ancient
