Melbourne city of gardens
"Melbourne city of gardens" has been a photography exhibition I held in Australia in April/May 2016.
Being legal immigrant in Australia or in a country different than your home country makes you face problems and situation that a citizen of the country does not have: permits, visas, restrictions are all things that we immigrants have to deal with but in my experience I can say that all this makes you get stronger and teaches you to not give up and keep going even if the going is hard.
In this exhibition, I wanted to synthesize my four years in Australia so I chose thirteen photographs that best represent the steps I went through during my life in Australia.
For each photo, I planned ahead of the location, the position and the time of the day to take the photo putting in all of them symbols that can be interpreted.
I have been preparing this exhibition for four months finding time between school and work.
As a Photographer, I learned some new things especially when I realized that I needed a full frame fisheye after I was working for weeks on the same photo without having any progress so finally I bought a Nikkor 16mm F2.8 fisheye that made my life easier.
Other than the fisheye lens, for this exhibition, I used a Nikkor 50mm, Sigma 10-20mm and Tamron 70-300mm.
Mainly I shot day and night photographs, but not only, long exposure with a tripod and with the help of a remote shutter release and a ND filter so my exhibition consists of photographs taken with different techniques and different gear.
As I said the thirteen photographs of this exhibition represent the steps of my life in Australia but the entire exhibition itself has another meaning as well: the first photograph is titled "Beginning" and the last "Ending" and being the exhibition developed on the four walls of a black painted gallery I had the two pieces, "Beginning" and "Ending" next to each other one at the start and the other at the end of the circle, the exhibition so also represent the life of each of us.
In the exhibition, next to the actual photographs, I only put the titles of "Beginning" and "Ending", the complete list of titles was in the statement of the exhibition, this because in life the only sure points are the beginning and the ending of it, whatever happens in between it's up to us because nothing is already written so I leave the exhibition to the free interpretation.
1. Beginning - the beginning of my life in Australia/beginning of life
2. Patience - to start again from zero without knowing not even the language is hard and it requires patience
3. Changing - people go and come in our life, we must be ready to changes
4. Cosmopolitan - Melbourne is a cosmopolitan city like Australian is a cosmopolitan country
5. Realizing - after the first period of living in a new country you realize how it works
6. #HelloAustralia - after realizing where you are you can start your life in the country
7. Rising - starting a new life means work hard to get to the top
8. Rule - as an immigrant you must respect the immigration's laws
9. Settle - that's the time to settle down
10. German - and that is why you are not alone anymore
11. Decision - time to take decisions
12. Remember - thinking about everything already done and consider it
13. Ending - every ending is a new beginning
Alfonso Folle
