We forgot. We have lost all sense of belonging. We no longer want to be aggregated to anything other than a brand's mailing list or social group. We think community is a web, a trap. And we only accept those community forms that can be turned off or silenced at will, apparently without too many implications. The "friends" we can block.

Modernity has discovered and exploded the individual. I want! I believe, indeed I know! I can! ... But, every now and then, we all feel nostalgia for grandma's meals, with the whole family around the table. And the memory of having been children, siblings, siblings, family members... who have spoken, acted, smiled within the tracks of a role defined by the community.

However, we know that today the condition of "member" would be intolerable beyond the duration of a lunch. We don't doubt our freedom enough. We are not suspected of being us today, too often, even less than members: followers.

Thus, when we are faced with a residue of true community, a community without the need for adjectives, when we are faced with this alternative possibility of life, we feel we have to defend ourselves from it by defining it as backward, uncivilized, perhaps violent or who knows what else. Generically Roma. More often, "gypsies".

These are the names, almost always pronounced as an offensive word. The usual adjective, at best, is "nomads", therefore treacherous. As if the nomadism that is not even a real thing for them anymore was an instability of the heart, a propensity for betrayal. Of what? Of a lifestyle to which in reality no promise binds them?

Ignorance, labeling, simplification, are the easy temptations of our time. Temptations to which, every now and then, increasingly rarely, someone opposes with a resounding NO!

Marina Galici's NO is a festive NO that has been able to collect smiling "wildflowers", describing bare feet not as degradation but as freedom. The childhood she shows us has not been plundered by the market, by the media ... and the alleged backwardness of these "flowers" has not put them hostage to our well-being.

We are the true nomads and traitors, when standing in front of the faces, now joyful, now proud, that the attentive and participatory gaze of Marina Galici has caught, with eight years of going the camp. It is we who have abdicated identity, allowing ourselves to be influenced by global brands. We are the ones who have let every difference and every tradition be lost, in favor of new habits induced by commercial needs: Valentine's Day is no different from Black Friday. But we don't call it "violence" just because we allowed it. But which of our "holidays" sees us so authentically free and happy? Which of our kids has this smile with a new toy in their hand at the mall?

Photography can have meaning and strength only where life is its subject; where the light is true light and the shadow is deep. Marina knows. Like the best photographers, when asked to say a few words about her work, she doesn't talk about herself, nor about the photographs. But the reality that excited her. In truth, her photographs tell us more about her than she knows. They give us access to her independence.

Connected to the event is the talk on 11 april 2023 at 5:30pm, entitled The field as an encounter-clash between communication codes, conducted by Carlo Baiamonte of the Collettivof with the participation of anthropologist Elisabetta Di Giovanni and the sociologist Michele Mannoia.