TITLE: THE SELLER OF PRICKLY PEARS

Giovanni has a strength inside that goes beyond his age. In the summer in the village, and in the neighboring villages, on street corners, his cry resounds "prickly pears, taste the real prickly pears!"
Tireless with his three-wheeler, he grinds miles and miles to sell these thorny fruits. He tells me that he collects them without the help of gloves, which he learned as a child, that all the people to whom he sold the prickly pears remember him. He insists on letting me taste a fruit, as if it were a precious gift, and it really is.
Incredible to watch him as he grabs the fruit full of thorns without fear as if he were immune. His face is tired but his eyes are full of truth and fatigue. He takes back his three-wheeler with its load and goes through the streets with its stories of fruits and lived loves.

AUTHOR: anna marzia soria (Italy)

Anna Marzia Soria, alias --- Biba --- freelance photographer based in Bari, always interested in photography and art. He loves a type of minimal photography in which the approach to the representation of reality takes on a more anthropological and artistic slant, sometimes documentary and in which the interaction between the natural world and the human world, even in a more conceptual sense, are at the center of his photographic story in an almost dreamlike suspension dimension. Photography is for her a long-term dialogue with the soul. Reflections in the form of an image. In his shots he seems to forget the perception of time. Everything happens in a simple and slow way, with the rhythms of natural light.

Winner in 2008 of the international photo contest "Flowers by you" by Kenzo and then in 2015 of the photo contest "Contours Outlines" and of a workshop with the master of photography Uliano Lucas: identity of the metropolitan landscape, organized by the Metropolitan City of Bari. in 2015 at the workshop of the photojournalist Marcello Carrozzo, in portfolio reviews with Enzo Carli, photographer, journalist and university professor of Culture and Sociology of Photography at the Faculty of Architecture and Design in Camerino and with Manoocher Deghati, an Iranian-French photojournalist. In 2016 he participated in a workshop "the self portrait-experience" with the famous Catalan photographer Cristina Nunez.

She is present with a personal portfolio on PhotoVogue, the photographic platform of Vogue.it curated by Photo Editors of Vogue Italia and is represented by the famous and prestigious New York agency Art + Commerce. In 2020 she participates in the #ICPConcerned: Global Images for Global Crisis opencall which sees the famous New York photographer David Campany protagonist among the curators, with the selection of one of his photographs, among over sixty thousand from all over the world, exhibited in an exhibition permanent at the ICP in New York with the other thousand selected shots. In 2021 she was selected by the CIFA (Italian Author Photographic Center) of Bibbiena (AR) for the exhibition "Quarantine Chronicles". In August 2021 she is among the finalists of the open call #callsifestoff2021 of the SifestOff - Photographic festival of Savignano sul Rubicone (FC), in October 2021 she is among the finalists of the exhibition "Fotografi per Ferlinghetti" at the International Center of Photography in Palermo,in December 2021 she was selected among the finalists of the “Oltre l'Immagine 2021” photo contest with the theme “Italian Street Photo Awards. In 2022 finalist at Siena International
Photo Awards with a photographer in the “journeys and adventures” section and finalist at the Fine Art Photography Awards in the photojournalism section with the series “Hic et Nunc”. In 2022 finalist in the Fine Art

She has published on Emc-Mag, C41magazine, Italyphotoaward, lensculture, Phest, Origine Magazine, Contrasto, Sifestoff, Yogurt Magazine, The Smartview, DocuMagazine, Rewriters, Seezeenphoto, Street Photography in the World, Storytelling and Street Photography, Edicola del Sud is also present on Leica Fotografie International in the official gallery with some photographs and the “Leica master