Ramallah is changing. In the West Bank's main city, money, invested by the Palestinian diaspora, is flowing. Shopping centres, restaurants and buildings, where an apartment can cost up to 12 thousand dollars per square meter, are springing up everywhere. Luxury cars have appeared on the roads. The artistic side of things is also in ferment, thanks to new bands, dance schools and the most avant-garde disc jockeys and graffiti artists. And all this in spite of the wall built by Israel, which surrounds the city and makes it, as its inhabitants call it, “an open-air prison”. Run by a very special mayor. A Roman Catholic. And a woman.
The last time they were in the news was due to the atrocities committed a few years ago by Jean-Pierre Bemba's militiamen, the protagonists of horrendous cannibalistic acts in the Congolese region of Ituri. The victims, the Bambuti pygmies, still live in the remote and impracticable tropical rainforests in the heart of the Congo. A life in the balance, between the forest and the roads, between customs and habits, which are the result of an extremely ancient wisdom and the forced contact with a “modernity” which is often transformed into abuses and exploitation. The call of the forest still remains strong however: a world of shades and life, where the pygmies blend instinctively and admirably with nature. And from this, they draw all they need to live. Even tree bark, upon which they paint geometric designs.
Parallelozero stands out in the international market with reportages shot by our experienced photojournalists all over the world. In photojournalism documenting areas of crisis, as well as in geographical and anthropological photography, the narration of places is deeply linked to the people who live there, to urban dwellings, social communities, and the private lives of individuals: in one world, to stories. Parallelozero was also among the first editorial companies producing multimedia reportages.
“The medium is the message” wrote Marshall McLuhan. A concept that fits perfectly into Parallelozero’s multitasking vision. Our in-depth, documentary-style reportages are made with texts, pictures, video footage and soundtracks. They are communication products in which our core business, the photographs, maintain all their visual and expressive force, that of an instant frozen in time, but are immensely enriched by the fluidity of video and the emotional power of sound.
Naples, the city with the highest level of criminal activity in Italy, counts seventy homicides, four thousand armed robberies, mostly with tourists as victims, and thousands of thefts a year. In order to combat the criminal elements, who are often secreted in the intricate lanes which don’t allow vehicles easy passage, the police force has created the Hawks (Falcons), a squadron which is practically unique: plain clothes agents who patrol the street in powerful off road motorbikes, their mission: to control and where possible prevent criminality. This is a risky mission which not occasionally brings them encounters with the Camorra and which makes them as they as they define themselves “moving targets on two wheels”.
Just like the aoidos (bards) in ancient
Three decades of conflicts. Millions of refugees. Fifty thousand war amputees. Tens of thousands of widows and street kids. Ninety-four percent of world heroin produced within its borders.
Afghanistan’s future doesn’t seem any brighter than it promised after the fall of the Taliban. Yet, here and there, there are some very dim glimpses of hope. Something that makes you think about the possibility of a future, and thus not to yeld to desperation. “Desperation” as a philosopher wrote “it is not to have nothing. It is to expect nothing.”
These are six stories from Afghanistan in 2009. Six dim glimpses of hope. Six reasons to believe that not everything is lost. All six of them are the consequences of its past. And, at the same time, the foundations of its future.
