A books collection from our photographer - PPH edition - Progressive-Street -

1. PPH
Where We Come From
Batsceba Hardy

2. Editorial Team
Batsceba Hardy - Chief editor
Michael Kennedy
Fabio Balestra
Concept
Batsceba Hardy
Graphic Design
Batsceba Hardy
Massimo Giacci
All texts and illustrations contained in this book are subjected to copyright.
Any form of utilization beyond the narrow limits imposed by the law of copyright and without the express permission of the publisher
is forbidden and will be prosecuted. This applies particularly to reproduction, microfilming or the storage and processing in electronic system.
Adult Content
The photographs in this book are realized by capturing moments of daily life in public places
and have been realized without a lucrative purpose with exclusively cultural and artistic intent.
Progressive Publishing House

3. PPH
Where We Come From
Batsceba Hardy

5. 5
Where do I come from?
I’ve never felt like a Milanese.
I was born Italian in this city where my parents
met, but I never even felt Italian.
As a child, I never understood the need to feel
that I belonged to a Nation. My grandmother
was Viennese, and from her I learned every-
thing important: to make cookies, to cook; to
celebrate Christmas,to imagine,to read stories.
And when I studied the Five Days of Milan *,
I did not know with whom I had to side.
I read Mark Twain’s books, and I was on the
Mississippi River, familiar with the smells and
currents, and the beauty and the sadness of
that mighty river. I was a Dakota on horseback
in the sacred Black Hills of the American
West, or a Sikh on the holy Ganges River at
Varanasi in India.
I never felt like a female, and always thought
of myself as a neutral being,probably someone
else’s dream.
If I had been born in this age, school
authorities would have labeled me as
‘different’ with problems of gender and
identity in general.
I am also dyslexic, yet in my youth this
condition was not recognized and so teachers
left me alone. This allowed me to grow and
form my brain map.
And become what I am (thanks to Viennese
grandmother) a camouflaged neuro-diverse,
without problems of gender, and happily
resolved through creative expression.
But let’s get back to the question: Where do I
come from?
I come from the pastures of my sky, from the
valleys of my dreams, from the high tides.
I have always lived in Milan, until one day I
found myself in Berlin. And there I found the
smells imagined in my childhood.The houses
were familiar to me even though I had never
lived in the German culture.
And that’s where I started to photograph
again (in the 1970s I was a professional
photographer) and become a street photo-
grapher. To discover me in a place that was
not mine and yet it was congenial to me.
Milan? For me there is a neighborhood, it
spreads in an area, the one that I can walk
without too much effort. My area … where I
was born raised and returned to.
After all, for a person who has absolutely no
sense of direction, it is normal for the world to
rotate in an area, whether it is in Milan, Berlin
or Neverland.
* A major event in the Revolutionary Year of 1848 and the start of the First Italian War of Independence
against Austrian Empire.
Leonardo and his Last Supper have always been
familiar to me, I went to the elementary schools next to
the church – Santa Maria Delle Grazie – where the
fresco is found, and this is the stationery shop (always
that) where I bought my black notebooks, I still
remember the smell of ink …
©RobertBannister

6. 6

7. 7

8. 8

9. 9
I live near Parco Sempione and Santa Maria delle Grazie.
I can arrive in twenty minutes on foot to Piazza del Duomo. In ten minutes to City
Life and Chinatown, in fifteen minutes to Brera and in twenty minutes to Centro
Direzionale in Milan.
walking through my neighborhood

10. 10

11. 11

12. 12

13. 13
The tramway vehicles are a typical component of the
Milanese landscape also due to the presence of the
characteristic ‘type 1928’ trams (series 1500) built
between 1928 and 1932 in 502 examples, of which 150
are still in circulation.

14. 14
The risotto alla milanese (ris giald in Milanese dialect) is, together with the Milanese cutlet
and panettone, the most typical and well-known dish in Milan.
1 L broth of meat
320 g Carnaroli rice
2 sachets of saffron powder
saffron pistils
grated cheese (parmigiano)
butter
onion
dry white wine
Duration: 30 min Level: Easy Dose: 4 people
Chop 30 g of onion and sauté in a saucepan with a knob of butter, without coloring it.Add
the rice and toast it for 2 minutes. Sfumatelo with half a glass of white wine. Wet the rice
with 2 ladles of boiling broth and cook for about 15-17 minutes, adding the rest of the stock
as it dries. Halfway through cooking, dissolve the saffron powder in a ladleful of broth and
add it to the rice. Whisk with 50 g of cheese and 80 g of butter. Let it rest for 2 minutes.
Complete with saffron pistils before serving.

15. 15
CITY LIFE

16. 16

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19

20. 20

21. 21
BERLIN
The city among the cities, that probably, historically speaking, embodies the most the eternal fracture between what's possible
and what is not, what has been and what will be.

22. 22
I don’t think I’m essentially a street photographer. I guess Photo-
graphy is just the way for me to express how I see things. It has
something to do with a philosophical approach to reality. I have
always had this way of observing reality, dwelling on details, on
scenes that tell me something.
Early on in my life, I felt inspired by what was around me. Eventually,
I got into street photography. It was a slow process. And this
happened in a city that was not my hometown, where my view got
released from all the parameters and preconceptions that you
naturally develop in known places. What I perceived in that new
urban landscape – and became the ghost I kept freezing every-
where and in everyone’s face with my shots – was an intense
feeling of loneliness. As a photographer, I am already used to
entering the world of loneliness because I must be able to become
invisible. So I found myself breathing in my own loneliness and the
solitude of those around me.
It is the distance between the photographer and the rest of the
people that allows the photographer to notice what is overlooked
and under-loved. I found this particular statement that confirms
my thoughts: “… if love belongs to the poet, and fear to the
novelist, then loneliness belongs to the photographer. To be a
photographer is to willingly enter the world of the lonely because
it is an artistic exercise in invisibility.” – Hanya Yanagihara,
Loneliness Belongs to the Photographer, The New Yorker.
The photographer feels and represents the loneliness of humanity.
This society is turning us into monads … and street photographers
are those who daily tell us about the loneliness of mankind through
their shots. And that’s why words are superfluous in this realm.
Only by looking at photographs we can understand this.

23. 23

24. 24
Looking in the glasses we see a world of souls

25. 25

26. 26

27. 27

28. 28

29. 29

30. 30

31. 31

32. 32

33. 33

34. 34

35. 35

36. 36

37. 37

40. PPH
Batsceba Hardy
I don’t consider myself as an artist, I’d rather consider myself as an artisan. If I should really be forced to
come up with a definiton, it’d be “artist of Irreality”.
It means that I’m allowed to stay outside, beyond things. Living eternally in the interspaces, those places
carved in Space and Time that can be captured on camera or on paper, telling stories. It means having no
boundaries nor impositions.
In many of my works I tackle the subjects of Invisibility, transparency. Empty and full. Both in a narrative
and visual way. Photography and writing are just two different ways to depict all this. That is, Absence.
As a matter of fact, I think and state that it is completely unnecessary that writers attend the launch of their
books, talk about them to a bored or excited audience, or photographers become the main attraction at the
opening of their last exhibition.
Authors live in their works, don’t they?
I don’t like to appear because I exist in what I create, in my writings, in my photographs. I communicate, I
show things, I suggest things. I tell things. I confess myself and play with Fiction: because we are what we
imagine.
Thus I don’t feel compelled to justify my absence, today. I’m not the first nor will be last.
But as an author I don’t want to be put on sale, in the consumeristic society we live in.
She has realized the Progressive-Street Facebook page, the official website and the ProgressivE-zine.
©RobertBannister