Africa Is a Country

Paolo Patrizi’s photographs of ‘shrines to the shortcomings of globalization’

Paolo Patrizi’s photographs of ‘shrines to the shortcomings of globalization’

By
Tom Devriendt

Italian photographer Paolo Patrizi says about his work on the “Italos”:

I used landscape shots to capture the phenomenon of Nigerian prostitution in Italy. My photographs contain the signs left behind by cars, waiting times and customers’ transactions. What emerges is a sub-human condition these women live daily. Some appear as if tricked by the idea that one day their prostitution status will be made legal. I have tried to deliver the emotion and the atmosphere of the eerie places I visited, thus allowing the viewer a glimpse of the littered makeshift sex-camps […] pits of dirt and abuse, shrines to the shortcomings of globalization.

You’ll find Patrizi’s full series here. (For more background on ‘The Italian-Nigerian Connection’: Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary on the topic is informative: part I and II.)

Further Reading

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Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.