Photographer Catia Montagna is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the series ‘Parallel Realities’. To see Catia’s body of work, click on any photograph.

“I consider consumerism as a form of fascism worse than the classical one … A form of fascism capable of homogenising societies by depriving of reality the different lifestyles” (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Wandering around our cities, in the western world and beyond, one cannot fail to perceive, through the filters of the specificities of time and place, how the consumeristic nature of our societies commodifies our daily experiences and acts as a force towards the homogenization of our needs and of the lifestyles we strive to achieve. Pasolini called it the ‘destructive homologation’ of consumerism.

This homologation hinges on a dichotomy between two parallel worlds: the ‘real’ one of ‘normal’ people going about their lives and the artificial one that the images and messages we are bombarded with everyday are designed to draw us into.

By offering the alluring suggestion of a comforting escape from our ‘normal’, these images generate ever increasing material needs. But, crucially, they also propose unattainable role models – particularly, but not exclusively, for women. Palpable is then the contrast between our real lives and the idealized lives of this glossy other world we are invited to crave for and that has the power to make our normality and our humanity look so imperfect.

This series contains photographs that were taken at different times in different parts of the world and is part of an evolving project that does not have a strictly documentary purpose.

Artist statement

I am a self-taught photographer and academic economist by profession. I was born in Italy, and I split my time between Italy and the UK, where I work.

My passion for photography goes back a long time. I started taking photographs as a teenager and for many years photography was something I did for myself. Fairly recently, I started to share my work on social media, joined the small f11-Collective based in Rome and became a member of the Progressive Street group of photographers. I have contributed to some collective Fanzines, had work part of collective exhibitions and have had featured articles in Inspired Eye Magazine and The Pictorial List. I am currently working with award-winning poet Andy Jackson on a photo-poetry book. 

Photography is important to me as an ‘experience’, starting from the act of holding the camera, looking through the viewfinder, framing and clicking. These simple actions help me see the world and, I think, understand it a bit better. My background as a social scientist has inevitably had an influence on my photography. I am interested in how we interact with our physical, social and cultural environment and how it shapes and is shaped by our lives. Despite this, however, by and large I do not develop projects following a documentary approach.  Rather, I am drawn by the subtle poetry of small, insignificant moments of everyday life and how they reflect the ‘existential’, and the ephemeral, in the human condition.

All images and text © Catia Montagna