Milano landscape view

My research was prompted by my study of the inherent contrasts in local cityscapes.

For years, I have been recording the state of abandon of the many former industrial sites scattered defencelessly across our landscape, with a special focus on the region of Liguria where I was born and started developing my photographic research about twelve years ago.

I subsequently came up against the more commercial side of my work, a profession that revolves around and is driven by the documentation of new housing, and took an interest in the contradiction on which these urban changes rest. I could not but develop a photographic passion for this dichotomy of our society, this ever wider divarication that sees, on the one hand, the creation of new areas and structures, some of great architectural interest, and, on the other, an inexplicable and silent abandon and neglect.

It was with a view to lending a voice to this urban silence that I embarked on my research in Milan, not only my adopted home but a city that, particularly in recent years and with the Expo approaching, has experienced and will continue to experience a vertical rise and renewal concentrated exclusively in certain parts of it.

My pictures explore the grey areas of places away from the Expo glare and its myriad works. Not only do they do so from an unambiguously critical stance but, more importantly, the photographic medium conveys their innate elegance, notwithstanding all the surrounding degradation. My work is still at an embryonic stage, given the infinite number of places on the map, but it strives to restore some, albeit melancholic, dignity to forgotten places that in times past possessed a functional and sometimes also an aesthetic respectability.

Following in the footsteps of a trend that focuses increasingly on disuse and abandon, my research helps reinforce this shared approach at a time when the fabric of those striving to reverse this rampant obedience is increasingly denser and more widespread.

Although, in my opinion, the charm of these situations brings with it an aesthetic richness before any potential actions take place, it also appears clear that – while, for example, the countries of Northern Europe have shown how such decay can be cleverly turned into creative efficiency and harmony – Italy repeatedly fails in this respect and advances obliviously.

The outer city areas “away from the Expo glare” possess unexpressed potential and unclaimed wealth, and all this produces a stimulus and observation that, when all is said and done, are a synthesis of my work.  

  Carola Merello is a professional photographer, specialising in architectural, industrial and interior design photography. Her photographs have been featured on several magazines, including Casabella, Area, Recupero e Conservazione and Grazia Casa, and have been auctioned at Sotheby’s. Her clients include architectural studios as well as institutional and cultural organisations. She has participated in several collective exhibition in Italy and abroad. In 2010, owing to her expertise in architecture and industrial photography, she was selected and interviewed as a leading contributor to “Digital Photography Course”, an educational dvd published by De Agostini. Carola graduated in 2005 from Degree in Photography from the Istituto Europeo di Design of Milan, where she lives and works.