Here, elsewhere, consists of a series of photographs that accompany the viewer on a journey along the margins of our society with the intention of exploring realities often overlooked or marginalized by the dominant narrative. Through urban suburbs, land and sea borders, informal camps and migration routes in Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East, the visual journey offers the opportunity to come into contact with the stories of people living in "spaces of exception" , understood as those places on the margins of the globalized world where conventional laws and norms are suspended, giving rise to zones of indistinction between the normal and the extraordinary, the inside and the outside, the here and the elsewhere.
The project invites the public to explore these border places, to listen to the stories that whisper between the folds of the ordinary, opening windows on worlds that coexist in the shadow of the recognized, where the subjects portrayed are not only bearers of excluded identities or marginalized but are at the same time protagonists of stories of resistance and reclamation of their rights.
Through an editing that brings together photographs taken from ten years of reportage, Here, elsewhere intends to collect and document the complexity of the present, opening up the possibility of other visions of reality, underlining the need for the gaze to move away from the centre, too often focused on the perspective of Western white man who discriminates and excludes views that conflict with his own, to which he contrasts the importance of an open and more inclusive perspective.
Valerio Muscella (1985) is a freelance photographer and documentary filmmaker who is interested in visual storytelling and multimedia projects on topics ranging from human rights to forced migration in Europe and the Middle East. His works have been exhibited in various national and international festivals, such as the Festival of the Suburbs at the former Mattatoio di Testaccio (Rome, 2023), the Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi (2023), the Festival of Travel Literature in Rome (2023), the Festival Riaperture of Ferrara (2022), the Photolux Photography Festival of Lucca (2022) and the Cortona on the Move Photography Festival (2021).
Among his latest works, the web-documentary "From here you can see the sea", on the Roman outskirts of Tor Bella Monaca was officially presented at the Maxxi - National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome as part of the Rome Film Festival 2023.
A web-documentary which he directed, 4Stars Hotel, won the first prize of the Cross Media Reporting-Dig Award 2015 (ex-llaria Alpi prize) and was selected by Docubase of the MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by the IDFA Doc LAB, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2016.
With the photo reportage "Haraket", focused on Syrian child labor in Turkish labor factories, he was exhibited at the International Doc Field Photojournalism Festival, Barcellona 2017, at the Castelnuovo Photography Festival 2018, and at Fotoleggendo, Rome, 2018.
He published "MOTUS. Campi, frontiere, Diritti", (Ed. Il Galeone 2018), a photojournalism book on migration towards Europe. He was selected among the best young artists of Mediterranea 2017, by Bjcem, Biennale des jeunes créateurs de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée.
His works have been published by national and international press such as Internazionale, Deutsche Welle, L'Espresso and La Stampa.
Trained as a clinical and community psychologist, he worked in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia, 1 year), in Tirana (Albania, 2 years) and in Rome (4 years), dealing with community and mental health actions with unaccompanied minors , street children, asylum seekers and refugees.
He collaborates with National Public Radio-NPR for which he has created several reports and with various organizations, NGOs and foundations such as Médecins du Monde, UNHCR-High Commissioner for Refugees, Sea Watch, AVSI Foundation and Paolo Bulgari Foundation.
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