Email me at chiara.tocci@gmail.com for a signed copy!

THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE IMAGE RECALLED by Denis Curti.

Back in the early nineties, when Chiara Tocci was still a little girl, she would watch Albanian refugees landing on the coast of her native Puglia. Gazing out to sea she could picture in her mind the country they were coming from, but there before her eyes the only scene that unfolded was one of desperation.
Twenty years after those events had been confined to memory, Chiara returned to the same scenario, deciding this time, however, to cross the sea, go beyond the horizon, and take a look at the country she had only been able hitherto to visualize in her imagination. Curiosity, as well as the need to know and to tell, led her to undertake a journey that would lead her to the Albania of today, where her eye finally encountered the characters and locations of a real story.

Her memories come back to life in the form of a story told in images, in which the photographer’s lyrical vision and the more direct, photojournalistic eye alternate roles.

(Photograph from exhibition by Anastasia Taylor-lind)

A Photographers’ Gallery commission… Now the exhibition is up and running, coinciding with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

An offsite exhibition showing in two locations this July & August:
Victoria Park, London E3: 27 July – 12 August 2012
Park House, 453 – 497 Oxford Street, London, W1: 27 July – 30 August 2012

The World in London is an ambitious outdoor photography project for 2012, showing London’s diversity and photography’s unique role in capturing the human form.

Over the past three years we have commissioned acclaimed and emerging British and international photographers to take portraits of Londoners of all ages and from all walks of life. Each portrait is unique in its composition, setting and style.

Coinciding with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, this project brings together 204 portraits of 204 Londoners, each originating from one of the competing nations.

The World in London celebrates London as a place where individuals from all parts of the world live side by side, each of them contributing to make London the unique city it is.

All photographs feature on the project’s website www.theworldinlondon.org.uk, this includes background stories on each of the participating Londoners.

In Amsterdam working with Dutch designer Victor Levie on the book “Life after Zog”, to be published by Schilt Publishing in April 2013.

I am really happy to be included in the 2012 Magenta Foundation Emerging Photographers from the US, UK and Canada.

Life after Zog is on show at the Fnac gallery in Milan (9th May – 12th June 2012).

I have been invited to give a talk to the students of the Hereford College of Arts.