Orbite

Walking as a photographic practice

The goal of the workshop is to open new perspectives on photography by exploring the creative and experimental power of walking, discovering together the world that unfolds through the journey. Through a series of meetings, we will analyze and experiment with participants the experience of walking as a photographic practice, aiming to build a collective narrative of the territory. The journey thus proves to be a source of inspiration and self-discovery, as well as an exploration of the space surrounding us, with the path becoming the main subject of the narrative. It goes beyond the mere act of walking to reach a destination and take photos.

Orbite stems from the idea of photographers Rafa and Davide to walk the utopian project of the Orbital Park that embraces the city of Milan. A circuit of 82 km, composed of islands in an archipelago that includes 14 parks as well as fields and spontaneous woods, divided by a sea of industrial areas, roads, and railway stations.
Walking as an aesthetic and political practice becomes a stimulus to deploy the imagination that arises from understanding what exists but aspires to the new, to the unexpected.
Starting together towards the East, at sunrise, we divided into two hemispheres to meet again in the West at sunset, thus reaffirming the importance of re-inhabiting a space capable of connecting us with others and allowing ourselves to be conquered by it. Using our body as a (re)agent capable of transforming it.
This act aims to convey the experience, sensations, and signs encountered along the way, focusing on the exploration of what is different from us and on the creation of new connections with space.

Rafa Jacinto
Brazilian photographer who moved to Milan at the end of 2018. He began his career as a photojournalist, working for both Brazilian and international newspapers and magazines. He was the founder of the Brazilian photographic collective Cia de Foto, with which he published three books and participated in several festivals and photographic exhibitions. Since 2015, he has worked as a freelance photographer and filmmaker. Walking is his main means of transportation and research, both in his hometown of São Paulo and in any other location. Since moving to Milan, he has used photography to get to know the city and introduce himself to it. His latest book, “Ci Vediamo all’Angolo,” published by the Self Self platform, focuses on the corners of Milan and is the result of numerous wandering walks around the city.

Davide Mari
Born in 1990 in Modena, since 2020 he has been living in São Paulo.
Through his artistic practice, which combines photographic gesture with that of walking, he explores various forms to represent space. He focuses on details, presences, intuitions, traces of possible lives encountered along the way, from which emerges a layered landscape mediated by his own emotional memory.
In 2019, he obtained a Master’s degree in Photography from the Raffles Institute in Milan, and shortly thereafter, he participated in the artistic residency at the FAAP Institute in São Paulo. His works have been exhibited in several group shows such as “Milano Intorno” sponsored by the Municipality of Milan, the Photolux Festival in Lucca, and the Centrale Festival in Fano.