Foto Pracownia Wschodnia invites you to an exhibition by Andrea Beggio.

The protagonists of the BLIZNY [SCARS] series are some of the people in the care of the Porto Alegre association (from Rovigo) and the Di Tutti i Colori association (from Occhiobello). I started from the concept of the "scar", understood as a mark left by a physical or spiritual injury. The starting point of this story presented in the photographs is a memory evoked by the protagonists, a word that refers to their roots and marks the path laid out by that trauma.

ALI - Somalia - aged 20 : my scar is a childhood in Somalia, breakfast at the home of my friend Mohamed's family, I run down the stairs fast, slip and bang my head on the floor. The scar I carry inside is also the tuberculosis I had at the age of 3. Because of the pain and a severe cough I could not sleep, and only in hospital were the doctors able to cure me.

AKMED - Somalia - aged 20 : At the age of 16 I worked in a restaurant as a waiter and often went shopping at the nearby supermarket. I fell in love with the cashier, the owner's daughter, and the love was returned. The girl's father and brother told me not to flirt with her, because the family had promised her to another marriage. One evening there was a fight, during which the girl's brother tried to stab me with a large kitchen knife; the trace is a 5-point scar on my ribs.

ISAAC - Nigeria - aged 22 : I was born in Nigeria and was a member of a tribe; here the shamans are the community's doctors and try to heal people. During a severe stomach ache, when I was still very young, a shaman healed me by making subtle cuts to draw out the evil. In Nigeria young boys of around 15 undergo a ritual (the so-called money ritual) in which a special balm is used to anoint the body. It is a ritual that is part of the culture of the Nigerian tribes, a ritual that left indelible marks all over my body.

MAMADU - Senegal - aged 22 : I came to Italy in 2017, to Lampedusa via Libya, where I got into a boat with 115 people; I was afraid of the sea because I could not swim. In Senegal I lost both my parents; I undertook the journey to Italy with my brother Sana. Because I was a migrant, during the journey (in Mali) the police imprisoned me. In Libya I had to work for about a year, up to 12 hours a day, to be able to pay for the journey.

ATHIB - Iraq - aged 28 : the scar on my hand dates from the time when I was an immigrant in Sweden. To escape the police I hid behind a grating and stitched the wound up in the street, because without health insurance I could not go to hospital.

BAKARY - Ivory Coast - aged 28 : During my imprisonment in Libya, every 2-3 weeks the soldiers tried to extort money from us through torture. The most typical torture was giving us electric shocks under the soles of our feet or repeatedly beating our legs and arms with metal objects. The torture could go on for hours. I was sold to human traffickers for small construction jobs. After 9 months I managed to escape, but during the escape my friend and fellow prisoner were caught and killed by Libyan soldiers. I am now doing civil service in Italy and work as a tailor at the "Di tutti i colori" association.

SULEYMAN - Gambia - aged 22 : Libya is the place where I first worked as a slave; I was 17 then. When I arrived there I had no money and needed work to be able to get to Italy. I worked as a bricklayer for my tormentor. That person terrified me, but I had no other way of "paying" for my freedom.

UCHE - Nigeria - aged 27 : I left Nigeria 5 years ago and made the journey to Europe alone. In Libya I was lucky; to this day I remember the sound of Libyan soldiers' gunshots. The boat in which I crossed the Mediterranean was sinking; a Spanish boat passing by rescued us and took us to the Italian coast. When I look back at the past I feel anger and I cry. The reason I left Nigeria still causes me enormous sadness.

The black and white portraits are printed in the darkroom on baryta paper, selenium toned.

Andrea Beggio

By education I am a mechanical engineer, and since childhood a lover of photography. I took my first photography course as a teenager at the Atelier della Fotografia in Italy. Since moving to Warsaw in 2013 I have been learning under the wing of Federico Caponi, studying, among other things, the techniques of developing and printing photographs. I then became a member of the Pracownia Wschodnia Association.