Not only spaces for production but for networking, creativity stimulation and skill building too: that’s how photographer Massimo Siragusa sees workplaces, the subject of his new exhibition at the Other Size Gallery in Milan open to the public from 10 June to 23 July 2021.

With Workplaces, Siragusa, four times winner of the World Press Photo, reflects on these spaces starting from their aesthetic and architectural dimensions to later expand on their fundamental role for society and individual identity alike.  

The ambiguity of the title also reminds us that “the workplace” is not only a physical place but also a stable occupation. The issue resonates with the current times, in which new work dynamics took over following the Covid-19 emergency.  

In his 12 images, Siragusa represents work environments ranging from the laboratory of MIlan’s Teatro La Scala  to the industrial hangars of Fincantieri, to the rooms of the National Central Library in Rome. The exhibition itinerary presents the photographs in six diptychs, combined by analogy or juxtaposition of geometries, lights, colors, architectural elements, and intended uses.

What unites them, however, is a great, consistent absence: that of the human figure which, although not represented, is almost automatically evoked by those same places, usually teeming with life. The effect is almost alienating and, in the observer’s imagination, it can only refer to the pandemic’s new-normal.