This work is about my friends Porpora and Valerie, both activists of Movimento Transessuali Italiani. I met Porpora in Naples in 1976, she has been my best friend since then.
I start to photograph her when I picked up photography and I still do it.


Questo lavoro è un’insieme di ritratti di Porpora e Valerie, entrambe amiche, da sempre attive nel Movimento Transessuali Italiani. Porpora incontrata a Napoli `76, è l’amica di sempre, e ho iniziato a fotografarla all’inizio della mia pratica fotografica.

The project is about the social and personal struggle of the women working in the maquiladoras – foreign owned factories along the Mexico - U.S. border.

My interest for the border area, initially, was a desire to explore the dynamics between the implementation of NAFTA and the neoliberal economic policies of the first world that benefitted from NAFTA.

In 1994, in Piedras Negras, a small border town on the Mexican side, I met Julia Quinones. Through her I gained access to the homes and daily lives of the women of the maquiladoras and I was able to show the richness and complexity of their lives, not simply the hardships but also the camaraderie, the playfulness of their day-to-day routines.

Further west, in Ciudad Juarez I followed the scourge of the disappearance of young women. Ciudad Juarez, a dusty and broken place of passage between Mexico and Texas, is Mexico’s fourth largest city and home to more than 400 maquilas – and home of one of the most violent dug cartels in Mexico.

Exploring the daily life of the women gave me the freedom to balance self-expression and the quest for a truthful documentation of their reality. The process of making images became a conversation and an exchange of experiences with my subjects. It is in the chaos of human interactions we can witness life and its conflicts, despairs and hopes.

Photography for me is never about distance. Instead, it is about feeling, grasping, and showing more of what is out there. Working closely with the people involved in the issue is not a goal in itself, but the means for me to make photographs – their life is my lead.

The web of maquiladoras allowed me to see the connections between my world, Southern Italy and Mexico, and the commonality of the struggle of women and their strong bonds with each other.

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"My face - My story" are images of Afghan women living in the NY area. The project came out from my desire to understand Islamic women, after the 9/11 tragedy, and attempt to see their reality beyond the rhetoric and prejudices that have been attached to their representation. My aim is to show the present lack of reciprocal cultural understanding between Afghan women and the American society they live in. The individuals in my photographs in fact while connected to the country they came from and shaped by its culture and religion, are also aware of, and profoundly affected by the American culture. On the other end there is little or no appreciation for their culture by Americans. By trying to adjust this imbalance through pictures, I hope that a reciprocal appreciation will emerge