Paola Di Bello
In L6, detta Profilo (L6, called Profile), the surface of the photographic negative is impressed by the light emitted by twenty-five fireflies, collected by Paola Di Bello in the countryside, transported to the darkroom and left to walk on sheets of black and white photographic film. The more compact traces correspond to the frequencies of male fireflies and the more broken up ones to female fireflies. Stimulated by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s famous letter on the disappearance of fireflies, the first report on environmental and social degradation in Italy, Di Bello reacts with this work in which she actually refrains from photographing, letting the action and the image take place by themselves.
PAOLA DI BELLO is a photographer and video-maker committed to exploring the socio-political problems of the contemporary city. She shows the potential for changing reality through work that brings together the global dimension and local life. She makes photographic campaigns about urban fringes, from the favelas of South America to Roma communities, travelling in Italy, New York, Baghdad and Japan. Her projects include Layers of reality – Mercado Central, São Paulo (2001) and Cosa si vede a Mirafiori, cosa vede Mirafiori (2002). She focuses on abandoned objects, illegal developments, people on the margins of society, which she juxtaposes in unexpected frames. *She was born in 1961 in Naples, and lives and works in Milan.