We are preparing for you the exhibition Towards which development?
It is now available the exhibition The most beautiful flowers in Africa.
To learn more we publish the text written by our volunteers who have conceived and realized it…
The most beautiful flowers in Africa
We are not photographers and we probably never will be. The selected photos have no aesthetic ambitions; however the extraordinary landscapes and primitive beauty of the African people are certainly bewitching…
“The first shots of my life go right back to my first African stay. In the summer of 2007 I decided to leave for Burundi and to take my camera with me. I knew it would be important to take back to Italy visual testimonies of that experience, but I couldn’t imagine how that journey would change my life, where it would lead me, and most of all, I couldn’t imagine that a part of me would remain in that country forever…”writes Vanessa.
With these photos you will also find photos taken by Tonino Procaccini in Congo.
United by the same path and above all by the same spirit, we decided to combine two exhibitions in one and dedicate it to the memory of an extraordinary missionary of our times, the Combonian father Gianni Nobili. Tonino and father Gianni met in 1971, when the nineteen-year-old Tonino left as a volunteer in Burundi. Since then, fraternally together in Kenya, then again in Burundi, Uganda and finally in Congo.“Everything comes from my night thoughts, mine and Gianni’s – explains Tonino – when we were weakened but happy in Dondi and we agreed to live the suffering of others, with strenght and love, but tired of seeing Africa represented with sad, painful and often violent images. So we thought it was time for a new proposal, to represent Africa through flowers”. In the exhibition – says Tonino – I also wanted to convey the image of a young Gianni who made himself broken bread for all of us and for the poorest, enlightening their and our lives with his unique teachings.
The selected photos mostly show moments of daily life and represent the attempt to tell the birth of an unbreakable emotional bond and to establish an effective relationship of help with a people torn apart by a terrible war with a sad record of dramatic poverty…
We deliberately removed too disturbing images of undernourished children and leprous adults, respecting the dignity and the unspeakable suffering they show… They are indelible images in our memory and inevitably accompany us everywhere. Then why do we keep coming back? Does “mal d’Africa” – Africa sickness – really exist? There is an awareness of having always received much more than what you have managed to give…There is the privilege of having touched the flesh of Jesus in the flesh of the poorest, the unwanted, the unloved…
There is a certainty that, as Father Gianni said, “even if Africa is a continent that bleeds from a thousand wounds, it remains a huge basin of vital energy and hope for all humanity”. We invite you to find these answers in the pictures shown here, to meet in the faces of Burundian children and Congolese children, the faces of our children, our sisters and our younger brothers…
They are faces that tell us a name and a story, too often dramatic, too often marked by the loss of their families and suffering. They are faces of an indescribable purity and where, in spite of everything, wonderful smiles bloom, the most beautiful flowers of Africa…
Vanessa Renato
Tonino Procaccini
