Recently there has been a lot of talk about street photography, but when Diego Bardone started taking pictures on the street, Professor Alfredo De Paz coined the expression "reportage of everyday life," which was then included in his well-known volume (2001), Photography and Society. From sociology through images to contemporary reportage, Liguori Editore
. I believe that, beyond fashions and trends, placing Diego's photography within this type of approach restores to his street photography the sense of research that it is; the dignity of a personal narrative that highlights the relationship between the playful game of social masks, and the counterpoint of the backstage, made up of people and places who have to stay and watch, who are not given access to the big game of consumption, to the pyrotechnics of waste.
As I looked at the photographs of SfilaMi presented here for the first time, some time ago now, these words of Charles Bukowski came to mind, which give the sense of a festive decadence, a bit like the reportage on Milan Fashion Week captured in its relationship with its natural counterpoint: with the street of workers, the elderly, students and bartenders, with the street where the life of those who, at best, can celebrate by eating an ice cream flows.
<<On this earth some of us fuck more than we die. But most of us die better than we fuck, and we die bit by bit, even in parks, eating ice cream, in igloos of dementia, or on straw, or above love that has landed.>>
(L'amore è un cane che viene dall'inferno, capitolo Letti, cessi, io e te, p. 117)

Anna Fici


Milan is one of the four fashion capitals along with New York, Paris, and London. During the so-called fashion weeks, the characters that populate the fashion world pour onto the city streets without interruption. Designers, models, influencers, bloggers, photographers, or simply curious individuals wear the fateful masks, taking on their assigned (sometimes only dreamed) roles in search of visibility and consensus.
In an era where everything is cooked, eaten, and digested at the speed of light, also with the complicity of the excessive use of social media, this spasmodic race to appear finds its peak in the fashion business.
Clothing has always been a status symbol used to emulate or distinguish oneself. Fashion sets the times and the sudden changes; it takes on new life and vitality from every social, political, and economic change, becoming a real mirror of society.
Consumers use it for their own need to belong to a group or, on the other hand, to assert their supremacy over the masses. Fashion and its consumers are two parallel universes that coexist but will never meet.
During fashion week, a diverse crowd, from the eccentric billionaire to curious onlookers capturing a runway show on their phones, meets/clashes on the streets of Milan, often creating surreal and entertaining situations.
Irony is the spice of life: tell me how you dress, and I'll tell you who you are, perhaps...

Diego Bardone

Connected to the event is the talk on March 11, 2023 at 5:30pm, entitled Tales of street and disguises, conducted by Anna Fici of the Collettivof with the participation of journalist Salvatore Cusimano.