Fabio Bucciarelli: The Dream

Over the past five years Fabio Bucciarelli has dedicated his life to document the major conflicts in Africa and Middle East, revealing to the world the cruelty of war and its devastating effects on the civilian populations.

In 2011, Fabio started to develop “The Dream”, a photographic project on the larg-est exodus of migrants and refugees after the Second World War. In 2016, the work has become a book, published by FotoEvidence, a prestigious publishing house in New York.

Within her exhibition space (which already housed, in 2014, Bucciarelli’s solo show, Maiores Nostri, dedicated to the South Sudan), from June 7, Raffaella De Chirico presents a selection of images contained in The Dream, thus giving a programmatic continuity of research through reportage photography, pertaining to social issues.

In a refined – and masterfully realized – authorial experiment, poised between the classic photojournalism and artistic photography, The Dream is a reflection deep on the universal condition of men become migrant; the focus on the human being rather than on refugee becomes the starting point of a long journey, where the dream is revealed as the true motor of an excruciating journey seeking refuge.

The selection of shots in the exhibition aims to reproduce the project concept. On June 7, also the book, realized through the crowdfunding of 197 people who have financially supported the production, will be officially presented.

The Dream is a lucidly oneiric photographic tale for a book that comes to light at a time when the refugee crisis has become the biggest exodus in contemporary history, often documented by the media in an impersonal way, generating indifference if not hostility among public opinion.

During the creation of The Dream, Fabio has made use of various technical tools to suggest to the reader a different perspective on migrants’ conditions today. The use of pinhole images, created with Pinolina (a unique camera, built specifically for this project development) gives rhythm to the book, leading the reader towards a participant experience.

The book has a limited edition of 1000 copies, in which black and white pictures, diptychs, composites and color images are alternated among the 180 pages. 100 copies are Special Edition, distributed in a “book vest” made by refugees – hosted in Pikpa reception camp (Lesbos island) – with those same life jackets used by themeselves to reach Europe. Each book vest is unique and unrepeatable, a product that seals the collaboration between the author and the protagonists.

The Special Edition also contains one of the four selected photographs with 25 editions printed on fine art paper Hahnemuhle German Etching 310gsm.

The Dream will be on display from June 7 to September 15, 2016 at Raffaella De Chirico Contemporary Art.