Space for the exception” is a journey through some informal settlements, so-called Ghettos. I come from Puglia, more precisely Borgo Mezzanone and Rignano, where agromafia and exploitation keep afloat a dark and inhuman system, and where such practices have become a norm in the agricultural world. Immigrants, segregated in outlying areas, live in non-conventional settlements. As we move from cities to obscure border territories, the classical dynamics are reversed, leading to new formulations of belonging but also of meta-exclusion, which often converge in incomprehensible ways. The series aims to be a study of the experience of people who inhabit these “non-spaces”, through a visual analysis of places and the few individuals who let themselves be photographed, through a hybrid process of documentation and staging. It analyzes how the peripheral developments have changed, transforming the countryside or suburbs of cities into border areas, through the emergence of unregistered settlements of shacks and brothels, which arise spontaneously. Thousands of foreign workers live here, exploited by this systems.I want to focus on the edges of these areas, immersing myself in the shacks and meet directly the people who have forcibly created this microcosm invisible to the rest of society. In the ghettos there are no controls or fences, but the form of restriction here is something more insidious and subtle, where those who live there are victims of policies that deny them the right to marry freely across borders in search of a better life, forced to live in “camps” or state spaces where their rights seem suspended.

«From a social point of view, being born in a difficult neighborhood is a sign. Take the case of the world of work, where a person born to a family of foreign origin in a banlieue often encounters difficulties more related to the address that appears on the curriculum than to the name. If he comes from a suburb that has the reputation of being a ghetto, the employer has the reflex to ask questions about the fact that the candidate is a possible source of problems and concerns».
[… ] «For about thirty years there has been a destructive game of cowboys and indians between policemen and children. I use this term because we are talking about young people who reach a maximum of 22 or 23 years. Most of them are teenagers[… ]».

“And I wonder what we are, if eating a tangerine at the table in winter, we do not taste the bitter flavor of imprisonment.” Leonardo Palmisano .