"Io Sono/I AM" is the title of a photographic project by Luisa Menazzi Moretti, which presents the portraits and stories of a group of refugees hosted within the SPRAR public reception system in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. A traveling exhibition, a book in Italian and English and a video now found in many Italian schools were the result.
. The City of Peace for Children Foundation, founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams sponsored the project. These are the three bodies managing SPRAR, a state-run reception system across Italy, in the Potenza province and the municipalities of Matera, San Chirico and Grottole. It was here that Luisa Menazzi Moretti - one of the winners of the One Eyeland Photography Award - worked with the help of social workers and refugees and asylum seekers willing to tell their stories beginning in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Nepal, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, Congo, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Ethiopia and passing through hard experiences prior to arriving in Italy.
Posed portrait and object symbolizing each one's story
''There is endless civil war...They want to stone me. They started throwing stones. I have scars on my head, my shoulders and my leg, look. I am Muhamed,'' said one 16-year-old from Mali. His is the first of the posed portraits in the catalog and is shown looking at the lens with a stone in his hand. The 17-year-old Mohamed from the Ivory Coast is instead shown holding onto a stick since ''a group of terrorists came looking for us...They hit and hit and hit again my brother and I'', he said. ''My uncle promised my hand in marriage to one of his friends...an old man, and I was 14. I fled and ended up in Libya, where it is hell. I would like to work in a restaurant. I am Adama,'' said an 18-year-old from Senegal, who posed with a pot in her hands.
Wuyeh is from Gambia, is the same age, wears his hair in a modern cut and a green tracksuit and is wearing a large watch in his portrait. ''My stepmother began to beat up my mother and I. I ran away.I left my country at 12:30 on a Friday.'' Paul is from the same country and is shown as he holds of a drawing of a dove of peace. ''I want to live a life of peace, a life in which I can help people. This is what I want, because this is who I am,'' he says. Sardar is shown holding onto a book. He fled from the Afghan Taleban because ''I am a student and I do not want to fight''. Azeeza is Nigerian and is shown holding a pair of scissors. In Libya, he said, ''you realize that it is the devil's country. I cut hair because I wanted to earn some money to escape from hell''.
Migrants ask: 'and so you lied about rights?'
Their stories and those of many others have begun to make their way to Italian schools, from elementary schools to high schools, through an eight-minute video and a catalog as well as a teacher's handbook to help them deal with migration-linked issues. Opening the catalog is a preface by the La Stampa journalist Domenico Quirico, who has been following the migration issue for several years to the point of having also got on a boat to cross the Mediterranean. ''Migrants,'' he wrote, ''asked us: 'and so you lied about Rights?' Hiding them will not be enough to relieve us of the duty to respond.'' A travelling exhibition as part of the project will be open from March 1 in Matera to then go on to Potenza, Lecce and Naples.
Watch the video for more on the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GiYO2W6H5E