What Happens When People Let their Italian Fantasies Go Wild

The Italian Community Center of San Diego (www.icc-sd.com), a 25-year cultural mainstay, unveiled Italia Mia – real photos by real people – a group photography exhibition that during ArtWalk San Diego weekend drove over 300 visitors!

Italia Mia (My Italy) is a photography exhibition that celebrates a collage of personal Italian paradises as reflected in photographs of real people telling their story in their own visual language.

The exhibit features 81 photographs by 37 people who answered the challenge and submitted photographs that represent their most ideal Italian fantasy.

The premise for the exhibit is simple. We all have an ideal picture that represents a personal Italian fantasy. For one it could be a photograph of a mesmerizing view from a restaurant overlooking Lake Como for another - a great snapshot of an unforgettable cappuccino in Piazza Navona in Rome.

The result is a poignantly spontaneous, yet genuine voyage across Italy.

Italia Mia is the collaboration of two ICC educators: Laura Bianconcini and Serena Camozzo, and one ICC student, Shlomi Ron - who have joined forces to curate this socio-visual experience.

“The building blocks of the Italian neorealist film movement were the use of non-professional actors to portray daily realities. What Italia Mia does is an inverse exercise where the participants are also the ones who capture the reality they experienced - unscripted, unedited, coming right out of their passions,“ said Shlomi Ron, one of the curators.

Fast-forwarding to today’s media landscape with the proliferation of user-generated content on the Internet (e.g., MySpace.com, YouTube.com), TV reality shows, and consumer-created commercials – Italia Mia in San Diego’s charming Little Italy is a must-see exhibit.

WHEN: Exhibition Dates: Saturday, April 29, 2006 – Monday, September 16, 2006
Opening hours: Every Saturday 1:00 PM –4:00 PM
WHERE: The Italian Community Center of San Diego
1669 Columbia St., San Diego, CA 92101
COST: Free and open to the public

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About the ICC
The ICC is a non-profit organization, founded in 1981 as a meeting point for people interested in Italian culture and language. Over the years the center has grown steadily, and currently consists of more than 500 members, a mixed group of Italian Americans, Italophiles and Italians of various origins and ages. ICC’s primary goal is to promote the diffusion of Italian culture in all its varied forms. In order to achieve this goal, ICC has always emphasized the importance of teaching the Italian language as a way to guarantee access to a wider cultural context.