Malacarne – Kids come first

Description

Malacarne – Kids come first is a photographic book shot by Francesco Faraci.

It’s a three year photographic journey made by the author deep in the bowels of Palermo.
The book, published in crowdfunding by Crowdbooks and edited by Benedetta Donato contains a selection of more than 70 photos in which the main protagonists are children.

As the subtitle says, children come before everything else, even in those realities at the margins of society, where there are “no written” laws that people learn to respect as real rules, in order to survive.

Ballarò, Monreale, Albergheria, Zen, Brancaccio are just some of the author’s journey stops. Francesco Faraci has discovered some very difficult neighborhoods that are microcosms separated from the rest of the city, where the children he photographed are characterized by a particular identity, strong and specific.

The right-thinking people call them the Malacarne, which literally means “Bad meat”, an expression of the local dialect that refers to people who can’t be trusted and that comes in a variety of negative meanings related to the inhabitants of certain specific areas of the city.

The photographer decided to use the expression Malacarne in a provocative way in order to break the cliché and show the other side of the coin: be children despite the difficult situation in which they live. The photos published in this book captures all the strength, vitality and energy of these children.

The dual-language book (Italian and English) features a critical article by Benedetta Donato and a story written by Francesco Faraci that accompanies the viewing of images.

Francesco Faraci (1983) is a documentary and social photographer born and based in Palermo, Italy.

He studied liberal art (Anthropology, Sociology) at the University of Palermo and he chose the photography as means of expressing. He learned from the great European and American photographers (William Klein, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Robert Capa) trying to develop a personal photographic language.

In 2014 he was awarded First Prize at the Festival “Nuove Impressioni” of Alcamo, with the photo reportage “Cupe Vampe” and he started a blog on the online newspaper “L’Ora Quotidiano” telling stories about Palermo.

In 2015  he attended a photographic workshop with photographer Shobha Battaglia.
A selection of his photos on the theme of migrants, has been used as part of the advertising campaign for the “Marcia degli scalzi”, a solidarity initiative to help migrants, launched by the filmmaker Andrea Segre and held in Palermo in October 2015.

That same year he collaborated with singer-songwriter Luca Bassanese to produce a video for the inauguration of the Foundation Don Andrea Gallo and the Comunità di San Benedetto at the Port of Genoa.

In April 2016 he was invited to Reggio Emilia as Artist in Residence. During his stay he developed the project “Ma io non vedo nessuno” later exposed in via Roma at the European Photograph Festival, as part of the Off-Circuit.

His work has been featured on Il Venerdì di Repubblica, La Repubblica, Il Manifesto, The Globe and Mail, Time Magazine, Erodoto108 and The Guardian. He took part in conferences and seminars on the reality of the suburbs of his town.

Solo exhibitions and screenings of his works have been set up in some of the Sicilian photographic galleries and schools.

He collaborates with “Associazione Teatro Atlante”, “Fondazione Ignazio Buttitta” and holds workshops at the “Scuola Stabile di Fotografa di Palermo”.

Today he mainly deals with documentary photography and social reportage, by placing at the center of his work his land, Sicily, which he likes to describe as a land of cultural crossroads and the existential paradoxes. He also deals with the issue of the living conditions of immigrants and children of poor, abandoned suburbs of the city.

He currently works with the Time Magazine and The Globe and Mail.

He is also a videomaker and a writer.

Malacarne – Kids come first published by Crowdbooks, 2016 edited by Benedetta Donato, is his first photographic publication.