Roma Brutale

The history of brutalist architecture can easily be taken as a model to narrate the contradictions and sometimes irreconcilable demands that run through post-war Western society. Brutalism has brought together works that make expressive vigor and the massive strength of structures the distinctive features of a declared integrity, impervious to compromise and marked by radical approaches to life and social relationships.

However, there is a more distant interpretation of brutalism, which can be found in the very origin of this linguistic and expressive designation. Le Corbusier declares in the chapter of the book "La leçon de Rome" : Architecture is about establishing emotional relationships with raw materials ; one uses stone, wood, cement, turns them into houses, buildings : that is building. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly, my heart is moved, I am happy, and I say, it's beautiful.

This is architecture. Art is here.

This influence is not obvious to the traveler or tourist. Cradled by the 700 "Madonnelle" - these small representations of the Virgin Mary dedicated to the protection of Rome's streets - it was only after several years of photographic wanderings that the duality of the city finally became apparent to me.

Rome is eternal: its pink and ochre palaces, the sweetness of life, give way to another truth that coexists permanently and ubiquitously.

As if this brutality could only exist in relation to Roman femininity.

That's what I'm trying to bring out in this photographic project.