ORDINARY SUPERHEROES

NEW YORK 29.02.2012 – With “Ordinary Superheroes: Toronto’s Urban Life”, the first solo-show of Toronto-based photographer Giovanni Damiola, ContestaRockHair is pleased to start the 2012 series of Gate 535 events in partnership with ContaminateNYC boutique agency. Giovanni has always been fascinated by street life and the random wandering that triggers unexpected and unplanned encounters. He started developing his first professional photographic project as a series of snapshots of people from every social status, genre, and race, whose interaction can only happen in a big city’s streets. Whereas in small villages and towns society tends to display a uniform and often homogeneous nature, metropolises are a triumph of diversity and originality. Strolling down the streets of a city is like looking at a living picture with the most ordinary people becoming extraordinary characters. In this series, shot in the streets of Toronto along a one-year period, Giovanni is half story-teller half detective. The camera becomes his investigative tool and empowers his imagination in crafting the city as the stage of a theatre populated by fun, ironic and unusual superheroes: ordinary people really, hidden and undercover. The photographer invites us to pay attention to the ordinary and discover a fantastic world in it. This is Giovanni’s touching, fun and insightful portrayal Toronto’s urban life.