Paolo Patrizi’s photographs of ‘shrines to the shortcomings of globalization’

Italian photographer Paolo Patrizi says about his work on the “Italos”:

I used landscape shots to capture the phenomenon of Nigerian prostitution in Italy. My photographs contain the signs left behind by cars, waiting times and customers’ transactions. What emerges is a sub-human condition these women live daily. Some appear as if tricked by the idea that one day their prostitution status will be made legal. I have tried to deliver the emotion and the atmosphere of the eerie places I visited, thus allowing the viewer a glimpse of the littered makeshift sex-camps […] pits of dirt and abuse, shrines to the shortcomings of globalization.

You’ll find Patrizi’s full series here. (For more background on ‘The Italian-Nigerian Connection’: Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary on the topic is informative: part I and II.)

Further Reading

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.