I am I – AtelierSì

Porpora – Cheap Festival

Venticinque poster per venticinque ritratti fotografici. Trent’anni di scatti e in mezzo le lotte, i viaggi, gli incontri, le rivoluzioni incarnate, i libri, le mostre, il rincorrersi da una città all’altra, la politica fatta nelle strade. Un bianco e nero poroso, una grana ostentata come si ostenta una ruga o una cicatrice che ci siamo conquistate. Dopo essere state al centro di una mostra al Centro Pecci per l’Arte Contemporanea, dal titolo Volevo vedermi negli occhi e curata da Elena Magini e Michele Bertolino, una selezione di fotografie di Lina Pallotta che ritraggono Porpora Marcasciano arriva nelle strade di Bologna: è la nuova affissione di CHEAP, il progetto di arte pubblica su poster che festeggia nel 2023 il decennale dalla propria fondazione e lo fa con un libro pubblicato da People e appena arrivato in libreria, DISOBBEDITE con generosità.

Fotografie di Giulia Rosco
Progetto organizzato da CHEAP

Porpora – NERO Editions

Porpora collects the photographs that, since 1990, Lina Pallotta has taken of Porpora Marcasciano, a historic Italian trans activist. The project intersects private, everyday life and collective struggles, becoming an image of a complex and layered human experience. The publication seeks to acknowledge an exceptional story that goes beyond the individual protagonist and becomes a collective narrative, addressing the issue of visibility and representation of the trans experience.

Porpora brings together an extensive selection of Pallotta’s photographs and four textual contributions by Porpora Marcasciano, Kae Tempest, Raffaella Perna, and Allen Frame (each from different positions: the marginal and militant and the art-historical). The last section of the volume, “Archives,” includes over one hundred and fifty documents granted by the archives of some of the TLGBQI+ associations present on the Italian territory. The documents, selected thanks to the comparison with activists, historians, and experts, gather some insights through which to reconstruct the political movements and struggles crossed by Porpora Marcasciano.

Italian version
English version

Winner of 2023 Books & Others Prize

Volevo vedermi negli occhi – Centro Pecci Prato

Lina Pallotta, photographer, and Porpora Marcasciano, writer and trans activist, met on the same side of the barricades in the hot city of Naples during the fabulous ’70s and never parted ways. In the ’80s, Pallotta moved to New York City, where she studied at the International Center of Photography and worked as a photojournalist, focusing on projects with a strong political and ethical emphasis. Despite the miles that separated them, the two continued to meet in dispersed geographies, from New York’s East Village to Rome, Bologna, and Naples.

In 1990, Pallotta began photographing Marcasciano with an intimate and affective gaze, using immediate and corporeal touches to capture their relationship. Porpora – the project which is presented here, a selection taken from hundreds of photos – is an in-finite portrait of a friend and companion. A sideways glance captures everyday moments, personal geographies, and the evolution of the body, elucidating the poetry of political action.

Download full text here.

I am I – Grenze Arsenal Fotografici

I am I is a journey into a world inhabited by complex subjects, friendly figures, often irrelevant and invisible to society and the media – marginalized. It is a comprehensive and long-standing exploration – woven from decades-long friendships and recent encounters – an underlying thread that intertwines with my own personal experiences and shapes my perception of the world.

The photographs feature two activists from the Italian trans movement: Valerie Taccarelli, whom I met in Naples during the movements of 1977, and has always been a steadfast and uncompromising trans activist, and Loredana Rossi, who is the founder and president of ATN (Associazione Transessuale Napoli).

These images aim at provoking a reflection on the role and complexities of media representation of marginalized situations. They are snapshots of moments, fragments that challenge the rational analysis of what they aim to document, without imposing a predetermined interpretation of reality. They represent an endeavor to construct a visual space that, without aggression, invites contemplation of the social dimension and our shared humanity.

I will develop a new chapter of I AM I during the residency at the Paul Thorel Foundation in September 2023. In this month, I will shadow Loredana Rossi in her private and public daily life.