22-01-2016

Marika Provinzano and The Parallel City

Young Italian architect, Marika Provinzano, is amongst the photography finalists in the Next Landmark 2015 competition with her photographic research entitled The Parallel City.



Marika Provinzano and The Parallel City Young Italian architect, Marika Provinzano, is amongst the photography finalists in the Next Landmark 2015 competition with her photographic research entitled The Parallel City.

Marika Provinzano only started doing photography in 2008 when she began her architectural studies in Palermo. Her father's old analogue camera became the perfect tool for creating a more intimate relationship with the urban space surrounding her and for understanding its dynamics more clearly. 
So, as she wanders round the city, a window opens up onto the reality of Palermo which can be described as parallel to the conventional one, as she calls it, because the architect and photographer notices every day procedures within the urban fabric that, although not officially codified, are inextricable parts of it. Spontaneous reactions to life, to its challenges and its blows like poverty, abandonment and degradation. 
Consequently, Marika Provinzano shoots glimpses of Palermo that are far from the glistening images of the Baroque city. In fact, in her photographs we see historical buildings miraculously held up by a web of scaffolding and attempts at decorating peeling walls with graffiti and drawings.  She takes pictures of the reality we tend to ignore. 
Hers are troublesome shots that display the art of getting by in improvised housing, the homeless and furniture on the river bank but it is not meant as a “J'accuse” but as a sign of awareness.  It is no coincidence that this young photographer chooses clear views where the composition represents its architectonic background.
The international panel of judges for the Next Landmark 2015 competition, organised by the Floornature portal, also highly appreciated her research on “a city that reinvents itself each day, depending on the necessities, dealing with immediate, temporary and fleeting needs, so unsubstantial that it seems almost difficult to recognise it as a powerful and consolidated concept with its own indisputable identity. Emerging from a continuously changing society, at an unrelenting speed, the actual city is too “cumbersome” and cannot keep up with or satisfy these changes but endures them with great difficulty, shackling Man to an obsolete condition which he does not belong to,” as explained by Marika Provinzano during the exhibition dedicated to the competition last October. 

Christiane Bürklein (@chrisbuerklein)

Marika Provinzano
https://www.flickr.com/photos/135810824@N04/

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