Claudio Gobbi

MILANO 2002

These pictures belong to my very first explorations in systematic photography. I started making this series during the final year of my photographic studies at Riccardo Bauer Institute in Milan, historically known as part of the former Umanitaria, one of the longest standing Italian philanthropic institutions founded at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, as a class, we were given an assignment to explore the Bovisa district, a suburb of the city with a strong industrial past, whose imagery is rich in cultural references and which inspired, among others, the work of the painter Mario Sironi. Rather than focusing my attention on the dynamic change evident outside on the streets, I decided to linger my gaze on the lasting of the recent past. I thus started shooting interiors in the cultural associations and oratories which are largely widespread in the city, whose architecture, furniture and colors appeared to me as the memory of a naiveté, of a sense of community that would soon disappear.