Castelvolturno is small town on the sea built in the ‘50 as holiday area in the hinterland of Napoli (IT). It’s one of the poorest area of Campania region, and still one of the most affected by the mafia phenomenon in Italy. It counts about 20 thousands of inhabitants and its territory has been devastated by many years of real estate speculation. In the last 30 years all the area was invest by a strong wave of immigration from Africa: today the rate of the presence of foreign citizens is the highest in the south of Italy. I decided to focus on the second generation of the African community of Castel Volturno. They are born in Castel Volturno and have spent all their life in Italy. These pictures were taken between May and June 2012 as part of an ongoing project. I decided to portrait them using three different registers. I was interested in them and in their relationship with the space where they are usually moving in. I also decided to take pictures of some landscapes, believing in the streaming between their life and the environment they daily go through, and I finally take a series of portraits in the black, questioning their identity from the back, investigating their postures while I was asking them about their future dreams.
This is an ongoing project: my aim is documenting through the time their growth and their relationship with the space. I focus on teenagers because they represent a threshold and I strongly believe they are a challenge for my country.