I’m from South Italy, from a region called Apulia. Since I was a child I saw Albanian Mountains from the coast and I believed it. Later, I discovered it’s a mirage.

The first mediatic image I remember in my life is the arrival of Vlora ship at Bari harbour in 1991. About 20000 people were located on this ship. They had no names: they immediately were called “invaders” from the national press.

Many years later, when I become a photographer I observed that nothing was changed about the representation of migration. At the same time, I saw how different the representation was that my region was given of itself and of white, middle class people on a marketing campaign called #weareinpuglia.

Fata Morgana is the name of a complex mirage that distorts objects and then fades very quickly. Fata Morgana is visible from my region in the southern part of Italy, Salento, and it gives the illusion to see Albanian mountains from the Adriatic Sea: but to me, it represents a powerful metaphor of contemporary geopolitical situation.

Fata Morgana is the name of the project I started in 2015 to question about how media were representing migration and analyze the stereotypes about people, cultures and civilization.