Francesco Chiot freelance photo/videographer based in New York (NY)

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1 Francesco Chiot freelance photo/videographer based in New York (NY)

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13 The Eight Million Audience SERVOLANA Servolana is an ongoing project documenting the social change in the neighborhood of Servola (Trieste, Italy). Pollution from the neighboring steel mill, drop of property value, health issues, immigration and lack of employment are the factors shaping the lives of one of the city most his- The Bishop s Meadow I park my car in front of the church, on top of the hill. This church has been destroyed and rebuilt twice from the fourteenth century, the white walls I am looking at date back to I walk toward the cemetery, this road used to have eight or nine between bars and restaurants, I recall. Now a pasta eatery and a chinese owned bar look like the only place where I could get a coffee. The Eight Million Audience is a multimedia project spotlighting music performers on the subway platforms of New York. Through photographs, audio recordings and interviews, the project aims to unveil the life and talent of unrecognized musicians who perform every day in front of an audience of thousands. Modern street performance goes back to the folk and blues revival of the 1960s. Examples include B.B. King playing in towns along The Mississippi River, Tracy Chapman playing in Harvard Square in Boston and Jewel traveling all across America with just a guitar and a knife. On the other hand, artists that have already achieved fame, like Bruce Springsteen or Bono, still enjoy playing in the streets, sometimes for a cause and sometimes just for the fun of it. New York has a love/hate relationship with street performers. For more than a hundred years, since the opening of the first subway line in 1904, various administrations have tried to regulate or prohibit underground performances as well as on the streets, while artists and activists have reclaimed the right of free speech by occupying public spaces for performance. The subway network of New York is the beating heart of the city. Millions of people ride the trains everyday, in a routine made of chrome, cement and noise. The prowess of these musicians can shake the passersby from out of their routine, make them stomp their feet and miss the train, creating an electric pulse for the sleeping souls of commuters. Through a video based non linear narration Iportray stories from this culture as a significant part of the city fabric. Watch more content on I meet my mother at the cemetery, on the side of the hill overlooking the stadium. The gravestones don t match the poverty of the neighborhood, this used to be a farmers village until a hundred years ago, and its house made bread was awarded as best in the Austro Hungarian empire in Looking around I see statues and obelisks, white stone and flowers. She comes every few weeks in the good season to clean our family graves, pulling the weeds. The flowers in the urn look dirty, she pull them out and starts shaking and beating them with her hands. Black coal like powder comes out, on the ground and on her hands, until the plastic imitation looks like real flowers again. In 1896 the Krainische Industrie Gesellschaft built a plant for the production of cast iron, on the coast at the bottom of the hill, it has been running ever since. Walking out of the cemetery I rise my head looking west and I can see the rust colored furnace and a tiny hint of smoke from it, closer than half a mile from here. Before the war there used to be a big meadow between the village and the Ironworks, but with the dalmatian exiles crisis in the forties and fifties it was deemed necessary to house thousands of people within the already tiny area of Trieste, building entire new neighborhoods or filling up underpopulated areas. Now, the houses reach the very border of the plant on every side, as close as five hundred feet from the furnace. The very first row of houses dates back to 1890s, they were built to house the construction workers coming from all over the empire to build the plant, and later for the plant workers themselves. They have been empty and abandoned for twenty years, since the last tenant died. My mother points out a window, unsure, while having a smoke. That was the apartment where her grand grand father Francesco used to live, a specialized worker in Ironworks in Moravia and Bosnia before settling in the plant of Trieste. She recalls playing in the front courtyard and then down in the bomb shelter, or up the meadow till the village. There used to be soccer field just next to the houses in the sixties, the gravel was black and so were the players legs after a match. Everyone was way more careless back then. Now the long time residents of the Bishop s Meadow have cancer and the property value has dropped five folds. Only those who cannot afford to live anywhere else stay, the original population being slowly replaced by immigrants from africa, china, eastern europe, the balkans and the middle east. Back to the car, I recall when I used to clean my moped seat from the shiny black chrome dust that built up overnight. The sun is set, a family is having dinner in the former pizzeria, now a cheap fish eatery run by the fishermen themselves, the only customers in the whole restaurant, the only light in the street. Behind them the furnace is a silhouette in the orange summer sunset.

14 Empty chairs are scattered in a residential garden in via Giorgio Pitacco, as the Steelworks is visible a thousant feet away.documenting the social change in the polluted neighborhood of Servola (Trieste, Italy). September 7th, 2013 Two men resting under the statue of Otto von Wittelsbach in the Hofgarden, Munich (Germany), September People enjoing the hot thermal waters of the Mill Waterfall, in Saturnia (Italy), November 2011 Rock band Deep Purple s Steve Morse playing a solo during a concert in Majano (Italy) on July 24th Documenting music events in north eastern italy for promotion company Trieste is Rock. Power metal band Kamelot s frontman Tommy Karevik interacting with the audience during a concert in Trieste {Italy} on November 21st, Documenting music events in north eastern italy for promotion company Trieste is Rock. Swiss photographer Cédric von Niederhäusern posing in his New York home for the International Center of Photography blog, on November 17th, Vietnamese journalist Mai Nguyen Anh posing for a portrait in Bryant Park (New York, NY), during his stay at the International Center of Photography, February 7th, 2016 A busker plays on the southbound F platform on Broadway - Lafayette subway station in New York (NY). Documenting the reality of busking in the subway network of New York, November 28th, 2015 Italian guitarist and fashion model Marco Kodric Leone posing for a promotional shoot for his hard rock band Nasty Monroe, December 12th, Customers waiting at a Laundromat on Crescent st, Queens (NY) on October 24th, Documenting the neighborhood of Long Island City for the International Center of Photography blog. Argentinian writer, historian of literature and poet Juan Octavio Prenz posing for the Inside Out L Italia sono anch io campaign, in Trieste, September 9th, Goldie Winn posing for a portrait in Times Square, NY, on February 3rd, Documenting the neighborhood of Midotown West for the International Center of Photography blog. American artist Eryn Shaffer posing for the International Center of Photography blog, on May 12th, Italian architect, curator and photographer Elisa Biagi posing for a promotional studio shoot. November 16th, 2014 Former resident Marina Zavadil visiting the neighborhood where her family lived for three generations. Documenting the social change in the polluted neighborhood of Servola (Trieste, Italy). September 11th, 2013

15 Francesco Chiot is a photographer and former software engineer, born in Trieste, Italy. After studying Software Engineering at the University of Trieste, he alternated between designing solutions for the public healthcare system and photography. He specializes in stage photography and infrared landscapes, and for the past six years he has covered rock shows for the Italian promoter Trieste is Rock. His prints have been exhibited in five solo exhibitions and eight collective exhibitions in the city of Trieste. He has collaborated as a volunteer and artist for Elsewhere Art, an international festival for mental health issues and INSIDE/OUT, a global participatory art project by JR. He is a recent graduate in photojournalism from the International Center of Photography and is currently working as a freelance photographer/videographer in New York francesco.chiot@gmail.com