BROOKLYN BUZZ
'The Bus carries me thru the City, I look out the window, I look at the people on the street, the Sun and the Traffic Lights. It has to do with desperation and endurance - I have always felt about living in New York. Compassion and probably some understanding for New York's Concrete and its people, walking... waiting... standing... holding hands... the summer of 1958.' - Robert Frank, New York 1958.
Brooklyn Buzz is the inaugural chapter of The Buzz Project.
It was conceived and shot in Brooklyn, New York City, US, in 2010.
Brooklyn is the most populous of the five boroughs which form New York City. Originally an independent municipality, it has maintained a proud and distinct culture, which is deeply rooted in the extraordinary ethnic diversity of both its past and present residents. Despite the relentless and ongoing gentrification that has started to reshape Brooklyn’s urban, social and ethnic features since the early 2000, Brooklyn is still representative of the legendary melting pot that forms the substance of America itself.
Brooklyn Buzz portrays life in Brooklyn at a time when its urban landscape and socio-ethnical composition have yet to be radically altered. Whether dignified or shabby, brazen or bashful, shifty or innocent, in this series, Brooklyn, caught unguarded, shows its many faces and, through them, its very essence.
Unpretentious, unsophisticated, of a coarse kind of beauty, Brooklyn’s character – its people, buildings, objects and even nature – seem to emanate a distinguished mixture of hope and despair, endurance and resistance, which has nurtured the efforts of hundreds of generations who have come to New York – from all over the world and through the centuries – in search of a better life. Whether they found it or not, their collective effort is what New York is today.
MISSISSIPPI DREAM
Between 1915 and 1970, six million African-American southerners left the land of their slave ancestors and fanned out across the Mississippi Valley for an uncertain existence in every corner of “free” America. The Great Migration, as historian would come to call it, would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. It would force the South to lay aside a feudal caste system, based on racism and segregation, and help to push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.
Mississippi Dream is a movie shot in the Mississippi Valley, along the whole course of the River. It is metaphoric reenactment of the “long walk to freedom” millions of African Americans have taken to escape hatred and discrimination.
ANGOLA PRISON
Glimpses of daily life in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in America.
Louisiana State Penitentiary | Angola | Louisiana
DEPORTED
The 9/11 terrorist attacks prompted a shift in U.S. migration policy and, since then,the Mexican border began to be sealed off, forcing undocumented immigrants to seek out increasingly remote and hazardous routes to enter the United States.
As a result, the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has decreased to around 11.5 million, but the records show a dramatic increase in deaths and deportations. More than 4 million migrants have been deported since 1990 and more than 30.000 are detained daily by the ICE.
Deported is as series of images taken in the no man’s strip of land along the US-Mexico border, and a series of portraits of migrants deported back to Mexico, in the city of Nogales.
HAITIANIDENTITY
The flux of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic is continuous and has been going on for generations but the situation regarding civil rights has remained unchanged. Haitian workers, mainly employed in the plantations, are systematically denied any form of legalization and identification by the Dominican Republic authorities. As in a slavery system, they are forced to live in a condition of apartheid and perpetual exploitation based on the denial of one’s identity.
Haitianidentity is a series of portraits of the workers living in the batay of Cerro Gordo, close to the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. Standing in front of the camera represents both a statement of identity and a claim for human rights.
Photography | Alessandro Cosmelli
Editing | Gaia Light
