By Joel Schalit
I need to go to Rome more often.
In town to take part in a television documentary, I had two evenings to unwind in San Lorenzo and shoot my heart out with my camera.
I’d chosen to stay in the area on purpose.
Few Italian neighbourhoods have as much street art to take in as this one. For a city visually dominated by its imperial history, this would be the alternative view.
Instead of Roman ruins, I’d get to photograph leftist posters and graffiti and supplement my pasta-heavy diet with local hummus and Turkish coffee.
I know the area well. From 2009 to 2010, my family and I visited Rome regularly while my partner was working on launching a new startup.
The neighbourhood’s anti-everything culture was a welcome break from Milan, in the grips of Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà party and coalition partner Lega Nord.
Our neighbourhood at the time, the immigrant-heavy Piazzale Loreto, was constantly being overrun by Italian army Land Rovers looking for undesirables.
It was the height of the War on Terror. Even though Italian troops withdrew from Iraq in 2006, they would remain in Afghanistan until 2021.
It wasn’t hard to equate their presence with the ongoing conflict. It had a clear impact on local tensions in the area, adding yet another layer to local anti-refugee politics.
Though I’d been to Rome for work in the intervening years, I hadn’t spent much time in San Lorenzo. Despite gentrification, the vibe remained, photographically, at least.
Though the photos in this edition of Aperture Priorities bear similarities with ones I’ve shot in Torino since 7 October—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict theme, in particular—they’re tougher.
Chalk it up to nearly a year’s worth of war and the significance the conflict has taken in Italy as though it were an echo, or even an extension, of right-left strife in Europe.
That’s not to portray Hamas as a progressive party, as it is to highlight Israel’s nationalist politics and what it’s responsible for in Gaza. That’s the biggest menu item.
I don’t mean to celebrate radical chic. The circumstances surrounding it are terrible. Nevertheless, it’s a sign of political health, even if we disagree with the details.
One of the photographs shows the overlapping of pro-Maduro and Palestinian flag-branded hurriya (freedom) posters, which is a case in point.
If only they were separated. Yet their proximity is not entirely off. Some leftists support the Venezuelan president. A block away, anti-Putin graffiti cancels him out.
These are the contradictions we capture at The Battleground. Everything is inevitably compromised, somehow. Politics is messy, and inconsistency is the norm.
Still, visually speaking, in neighbourhoods like San Lorenzo, the sum is better than the parts. I’m used to taking what I can get because I’d despair without it.
On that note, Team Battleground will be on break until 2 September.
Look forward to new books this Fall from Charlie Bertsch and Wieland Hoban and field recording LPs by Duncan Simpson and yours truly.
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Photographs courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.