PAOLO NOVELLI

Sorry for the long silence… good to be back on the blog and good to be back in Kenya.

After few more shots in Nairobi, where the street people and their urban spaces were the initial scenario of my work, I’m ready to move on to other landscapes. The perception of people’s space and identity, the adaptation, the presence in the multitudes and in the solitudes are the main themes of my visual journey through Africa and other continents.

I brought to Nairobi the first prints and I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction of the amazing boys and girls that acted with inspiring joy and subtle sense of humour in the theatrical presentation of themselves and of their everyday environment. In the printing process I came across some pictures that I didn’t upload in the first preview. Here’s an example. Few more may follow in the next days.

Hope you’ll enjoy. All your comments are as usual very inspiring and welcome.

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

“Informalities” is my final encounter with the chokora, the street people of Nairobi, or maybe my first landing, after years, on a territory where forms of expression may be reciprocally exchanged. With the typical slowness of the view camera and my reconfirmed reliance on the alchemy of film, I envisaged a sort of play of reality in which the crafty actors were the street people themselves. The chokora present the environment in which they live and present themselves to the other world, our world, revealing not only a vigorous manifestation of identity and style, but more surprisingly even, their intimate and unconscious provocatory balance in a suburban scenario in which improvisation and survival become a form of art, one of scathing and unsuspected beauty.

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved

©P9 Paolo Novelli – All rights reserved