Your name
Miriam Alé
Place of birth
Gela (CL) (Sicily, Italy)
Place where you live now
Roma
3 words to describe you
exuberant, curious, precise
Why do you take pictures?
I take pictures because I want to explore my point of view through the look of my subjects.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I get inspiration from my personal concern about the society I live in.
Who are your influences?
My influences come from reportage and documentary photography. I'm in love with intimate photographers such as Lisa Sorgini.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
I usually photograph social issues that personally matter to me. It's a journey through my political visions.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I'd like art to create connections, change people's destinies.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I never get bored with documentary photography because of its relationship with time.
Is there anything you want to add?
I think life is connected to art, in every second. We just have to look at our world with eyes full of wanderlust.

Prima Ràma
Project statement

I started photographing my grandfather the day I realized he wasn't gonna be there forever. I was nineteen, I wanted to create memories: I ended up opening many locked doors of my childhood. Despite and thanks to his blindness, he was fearless of the camera. He completely trusted me and my point of view, knowing I wasn’t going to betray him in telling a story about him. Photography gave us both the opportunity to be involved in the same project: he suggested ideas for the photos, situations to stage, in order to better tell his story. Hands are a big part of the project, they’ve always fascinated me, especially my grandfather's : smooth and delicate professor hands. He would have been lost without them: he has lived autonomously through twenty years of blindness. I used to touch and stare at them.

Our relationship really had a turning point even if it was already a deep one. He started opening up about his most intimate thoughts, about our family and his private life.
My research was not just about my familiar origins but environmental too. I had to discover my city, building my own view of it, despite the common narrative: a city destroyed by the presence of petrol, cancer and so on.
I had to re-write that story, looking for poetry in the streets I grew up in, as my grandfather did, in a journey through the landscapes of a daydream.

miriam alè
@miriamale.ph