michela vanda caserini

I am a researcher at the Politecnico di Milano, working to portray places of dwelling in subordinate conditions as witnesses to the consequences of the aggressive times we live in today.
I usually use hand drawing, combined with photography, to tell the stories of habitation.To date, the most important work I have undertaken is part of my PhD research, which focused on depicting homes subject to demolition in a marginalized neighborhood of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. I spent months living within the community, portraying their living conditions through their homes.I try to immerse myself in the lives of the people I need to portray. I cannot deny the presence of the camera—it is evident that I will never be part of the community—but the greatest challenge is to seek a dialogue, an exchange, hoping for the most authentic one possible, in order to establish a relationship that can somehow justify my presence, making it appear less arrogant and, hopefully, kind. I started this work in China, portraying the communities of LiLong dwellers in Shanghai, homes of the lower classes where a distant Chinese culture still barely survived before their demolition.I capture these places in the hope that they may not only be known but that ethnographic portraiture can become a tool for companies and NGOs working on reconstruction, allowing them to rely on a meticulous and detailed analysis. I don’t know if I can consider my self as a professional photographer, nor a photojournalist, but I follow the path of the great masters, hoping that one day I, too, may be able to show what I have seen, to keep the promise I made to those residents in Mozambique—who, once photographed after the flood, asked me to share my images with the world so that everyone could know what was happening in their homes. Luckily, this work got two global prizes so far.