Joel Schalit

Brown Sugar

Germany was not a frequent subject of discussion in my family while I was growing up. Though my father had served in the Second World War, he was a Palestinian Jew whose family had been in the Middle East since 1882. Despite the fact that he had serious issues with the country, at the same time, it did not occupy the same kind of negative mental space, as say, the UK.

To wit, I remember the day Elie came home to London, following a business trip to Hamburg. Opening up his briefcase, he pulled out a Boney M record. If I remember correctly, it was the album with their hit Rasputin. “The most popular group in Germany,” he told us. Looking at the packaging, I noticed that the band members were black. That was that. I never thought about it again.

Photos taken on Koenigstrasse, in Stuttgart, Saturday. Click for detail.

Open-Air Gallery

South Asian-focused photo exhibit. South Asian migrant workers. Via Padova, Milan. February 2010.

Click for larger photo.

Inoculated City

I couldn’t think of a better expression of Italy’s anxiety about its increasingly multicultural character than this bus advert for designer jeans. Shot in front of our apartment building in Milan last week, it’s also featured as the main photo on Zeek’s landing page today. I wanted an image that would speak to Wednesday’s feature, Mya Guarnieri’s  We’re Not White Trash. We’re Jews.

The same logic applies to this picture, which we ran on Monday. Published in conjunction with Bruce Wilson’s Their Religion is Hatred, I was hoping the photo would help capture, however indirectly, the stress felt by Arab migrants, like this woman, standing in front of Lega Nord campaign posters, already condemned by an elections campaign monitor. (See “Manifesto Abusivo.”)

Though this photo has already expired (replaced today by the bus advert photo), its caption read “War in the ghetto,” since the shot was taken on Via Padova, the symbolic heart of Milan’s immigrant community. The bus picture, similarly, bears the caption “Dreaming of Multiculturalism,” as a means of explaining what it reflects, rather than what it intends to express. Everything is documentary.

On the Border

Local curio shop trafficking in kitsch covering everything from Italian colonialism to boys toys and illegal immigration. Milan, 12/09.

The Coming Community

Inside the Christmas market. Milan, 12/12/09.

All Languages Lead to Rome

Albanian, French and Arabic samples of migrant news and money transfer services. Migropolis exhibit, Venice, October 15.

Chock Full of Signifiers

Who said advertising was bad for you. Milan, 9/18.