REST DAYS _____ (Il Giorno di Festa)

Rest Days is a project of 24 colour photographs, depicting a series of closed shops shutters.

This work wants to represent, through the repetition of the same kind of subject, the feeling arising from walking in little towns on Sundays and holidays, when the shops are closed and the streets are nearly empty.

The photos were taken in several small towns, close to each other, located in a suburban area next to Milan called “Martesana”. These places weren't fully involved in the 1970's urban and demographic revolution caused by the migration from South Italy. In each of these towns, unlike what happens in the rest of Milan urban area still persists a certain sense of belongings to a known small community, to some well-known meeting traditions.
But even in these places that maintained a closer relationship to their tradition, the social aggregation habits have changed substantially during the years. I was born and raised in this area and therefore I had the opportunity of watching and observing its development. Twenty-five years ago, for example, the streets of these small towns were bustling and crowded on Sundays and holidays, and this was related to a real human need of sharing common public places. From that time the situation has radically changed. Nowadays you can meet people in those streets only when the shops are open, while on holidays the closed rolling shutters impose their presence on the desert town. In this new context, it is as if shops have changed their function, becoming symbols of the inhibition that consumerism exercises on spontaneous social aggregation, rather than useful daily facilities.

In this project I decided to represent the closed shops and their shutters focusing on their acquired status of predominant element in Sundays urban landscape. The shutters hide what's inside, becoming apparently identical to each other, and in their repetition looking more and more like a minimalist series of ordered anonymous headstones. This sort of cemetery, in its plain silent presence, attests the radical change of people social "values" and aggregation habits since 1980's, that is the tendency to move from real public spaces, distant from obsessive commercial intent, to the primary private space, the house, or to spaces perceived as public but created only to induce people to spend their money.

The photos were taken in the following towns: Bussero, Caponago, Carugate, Cernusco soul Naviglio, Gorgonzola and Pessano con Bornago.