Tri(e)ste - The Silos at the end of the Game - A Balkan Route’ Migrants Photoreportage

A photoreportage on the Balkan route migrants

The Silo is a non-place a few steps from the center of Trieste, the regional capital. The huge building, adjacent to the silo Park, is abandoned and in ruins. Reminiscent of the period of the Giuliani refugee exodus, over the years it has gathered thousands of migrants from the Balkan route waiting to receive permission to move to the centers responsible for their management.

Forced to take refuge in camping tents, under the brick vaults that do not offer protection against the rain, they wait their turn to continue the journey. Others, to avoid the mud and garbage swamp on the ground floor, camp on the first floor, between dangerous passages on ledges without floors, dismantling the ceiling beams to cook food and keep warm.

Their livelihood is mainly entrusted to volunteers. The ICS, the Community of Sant’ Egidio FVG and the Linea d'Ombra association offer medical assistance and human contact also in the square in front of the Silo. Entering the silos and talking to its occupants is an experience that brings into contact with the reality of the world of migrants and the conditions to which those who undertake journeys of years, in search of a better life, are subjected. The Silos were evacuated in June 2024, but the flow of migrants did not stop, which means that their problems are still there and we have the opportunity to duly face and solve them.

The images in this report attempt to represent the invisible by making us reflect on the concept of removal. Every new thing forces us to make an effort that we are not always willing to make. Out of convenience, impossibility, laziness or inability, we could be led to ignore the new reality and not see it, to remove it. The subjects of the images are placed in the context of their harsh reality as migrants but without physiognomy. Whether they are in the African fields or in the Silo in Trieste, they are shadows, silhouettes, movements at the edges of our field of vision.

They move among the dirt and rats a few steps from the streets of the TOWN center and yet as if they were moving among the rubble of a war, the cold of an announced catastrophe, our future of indifference. The Fine Art Giclée prints are 100% Hahnemuehle cotton fiber and were obtained with a process that uses carbon pigments to obtain the most opaque and deep blacks, giving the colors a graphic effect of alienating relief.