Today I followed again Roberto and Lorenza in their walking campaign. I must confess that I am getting quite curious about the results. Will so much walk and one-to-one contact pay? Or is the winning strategy about big posters and leaflets on windscreens?
Roberto is a bit of an outsider, he does not like to talk much about political strategies and manoeuvring of the party. He is coming out as a person really believing in the "politics of the water fountain" (as his idol, Walter Veltroni, the leader of the new democratic party defines it): politics focusing on the contact with the citizens, caring about their needs, looking at the details.
So he is walking around, talking to all the people he can meet, getting their feedbacks and their complaints. And after hearing so many people I am getting an image of this part of Roma as a big village rather than the town I used to know. And definitely there are some funny characters around.
The expectation for today was a visit of the candidate mayor (Francesco Rutelli, a very famous and popular politician) to the food markets of municipio XVII. He cancelled last minute, so instead of an active morning of shooting crowds and markets we went to visit attractions such as dog gardens and streets where Roberto organized a very popular tree pruning to keep away the birds (and I realize now that I lack photographic evidence of such pruning). I am running a bit out of ideas in these walks, I am not fully sure of how I will put together the story… but I suppose that boredom and routine are useful to force me to try and see different aspects of the same type of interaction (which I am constrained to shoot from some distance, because I really do not want to disturb much the conversation). One challenge is to find meaningful details. And I still feel I have no good shots capturing the environment. But this is probably also because it is hard to find out a way to capture in a meaningful ways streets where I pass everyday: I probably need some distance. Maybe I should do the selection of images when I will be in Torino next week to cast my vote.
Anyway, in the meantime I have done a few pictures about electoral advertisment by other candidates.
After walking and cycling all day I finally sat on at a talk by Martin Parr. He was supposed to talk about photobooks, but he never was told so by the organizers - as it transpired in an embarrassed introduction! - and ended up talking about his books. He was invited as president of the jury the first photobook prize of Roma, won by Davide Monteleone with his book “Dusha - Anima Russa"
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