ABITARE CONDIVISO
Cohabitation is the sharing of the same living space by two (or more) families (composed by one or more members).
I started from this definition (the classical one we find in social sciences) for my journey through the experience of cohabitation. It is a much larger world than that of out-of-town students (the typical and perhaps only option we think about when we talk about cohabitation), going from a literal division of the space among people who don’t even know each other to other unexpected forms. It is a world that is strictly connected to all that is shaping our society: precarious and temporary work, the growing loneliness of the elders, the difficulty of young people in leaving their families, financial speculation on the housing market.
In order to enter this world and reveal the effects of these large-scale processes, I decided to look at individual stories. I chose to start from the small, using a direct approach to take me right in the middle of personal and collective experiences that would allow me to observe and narrate.
So, I ended up in strangers’ apartments, entering their intimate space and listening to stories about them, their houses, their living together. The narration of these both private and public stories is both in the text and in the images.
I needed to find a single photo that could tell both the relationship between the people and their space. An image that wouldn’t just be an illustration of the text, but a piece of narration in itself. That was the aim guiding me and my camera at the end of each chat. This is the aim of the work you are about to look at.
