milanocittainterna

**MILAN INNER CITY**
**Charity Auction Featuring Photographs by Simone Durante, Organized by Arci Bellezza APS**

Imagine wearing a pair of glasses with special lenses, perhaps capable of breaking sunlight into a prism of colors. Imagine those new colors blending with the reality we know.
Perhaps this is what Simone Durante envisioned twenty years ago when he left his Sicilian hometown to move to Milan, a city where everything appears multiplied, like in an urban hall of mirrors.

The project *Milan Inner City* stems from the desire to connect with a place "on equal footing," playing physically with photography to bring Milan back to a more human scale. It’s almost an ironic reconciliation with a city that, in the artist’s words, “first took everything from me – the sea, my home, the volcano, the closeness of loved ones in my Sicilian village – but also gave me everything.”
This project is a tribute to both lands, Lombardy and Sicily, intertwining in a short circuit of images, signs, and colors, much like they have in the artist’s contrasting memories and emotions.

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As part of the crowdfunding campaign launched by Arci Bellezza APS to renovate its historic venue, the former *Società del Mutuo Soccorso Manfredini* at Via Giovanni Bellezza 16/A, Simone Durante has donated his photographs to be auctioned.

The photographs were taken with a 35mm analog camera and developed. At this stage, the artist’s direct intervention begins: he immerses the negatives in a bath made of a self-produced acid mix, causing the gelatine to detach from the film base and altering the colors. After re-fixing the gelatine, Simone engraves the images with scratches and marks.

Through this unique technique, Simone transposes the colors of his native Sicily into Milan with the freedom of a painter. Ochres and reds ignite the facades of buildings, while blues and aquamarines spread like liquid over the Duomo's spires or anonymous figures waiting at a station, breathing life and movement into otherwise static images, making them vibrate under a new light.

Simone bypasses nostalgia by transforming a “disorienting” city into a postcard. In these fluidly interwoven images, scratches become the elements of real disruption – sharp and almost violent marks. In a city as sprawling as Milan, where a single building might house as many people as an entire village, it’s easy to feel lost. Here, the artist’s intervention asserts his presence; every color, every incision says, "I am here," creating a Milan that’s a bit more tailored to Simone’s scale.

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### **Simone Durante**
**Photojournalist and Videomaker**
Simone Durante is no accidental photographer. Born in Sicily in 1974, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan, immediately diving into social reportage before also becoming a videomaker and photography instructor.

Simone’s works are driven by fierce curiosity and immense compassion. He masterfully blends techniques and captures fleeting moments with a single click.
**Contact:** [https://www.simonedurantephotography.com/](https://www.simonedurantephotography.com/)

All works are sized 30x40cm, framed in black, signed, and dated on the back.