New York di Matilde Damele

A journey into the heart of the Big Apple, made up of streets, faces and urban scenes. Organised by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale - Capitoline Superintendence for Cultural Heritage, and curated by Giovanni De Angelis, the exhibition at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere presents to the public the work of the photographer Matilde Damele. Born in Bologna, she spent fifteen years of her life in New York, forging an intimate relationship with the city using her analogue Leica M6.

Damele’s images do not merely document New York: they traverse it, breathe it in, and transform it into a metaphor for an inner journey. In her photographs, the street becomes a space for introspection and self-discovery, an urban stage traversed by the gaze of a contemporary flâneuse. Like a silent observer immersed in the ceaseless flow of New York, from Brooklyn to the West Side and on to the Bronx, Damele chooses to slow down, to seek out that suspended moment in which humanity reveals itself in all its fragility. It is a narrative woven from solitude, waiting and subtle gestures, evoking the black-and-white poetics of photographers such as Garry Winogrand or Helen Levitt, reimagined through a deeply personal sensibility.

This urban perspective is complemented by a series dedicated to Coney Island, where the city’s tension gives way to a slower, more suspended atmosphere, amidst beaches and decaying funfairs, eccentric figures and moments of everyday life that border on the surreal. The exhibition concludes with a series of images taken in Rome around Porta Maggiore, which capture the artist’s poetic vision through a unique and contemporary lens.