THE BUZZ PROJECT_03_2016

THE BUZZ PROJECT

ALESSANDRO COSMELLI AND GAIA LIGHT

developed with the support of Leica Camera Italy



THE BUZZ PROJECT

by Alessandro Cosmelli & Gaia Light

“The Bus carries me thru the City, I look out the window, I look at the people on the streets, the
Sun and the Traffic Lights. It has to do with desperation and endurance – I have always felt that
about living in New York. Compassion and probably some understanding for New York’s Con-
crete and its people, walking… waiting… standing up… holding hands… the summer of 1958…”

–Robert Frank, From the Bus (1958)

“The earth has urbanized even faster than originally predicted by the Club of Rome in its notori-
ously Malthusian 1972 report, Limits of Growth. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a
population over one million; today there are 400, and by 2015, there will be at least 550. Cities,
indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950 and are
currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week. The present urban population (3.2
billion) is larger than the total population of the world in 1960. The global countryside, meanwhile,
has reached its maximum population (3.2 billion) and will begin to shrink after 2020. As a result,
cities will account for all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10
billion in 2050 […]”.

–Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (2006)

The Buzz Project presents a symbolic portrait of the contemporary metropolis and its
inhabitants, as seen from the public bus window. Caught in passing, each image is a
chance arrangement of figures that appeared for a brief moment in front of the cam-
era before the bus moved on, gleaning people’s hidden or transitory states of being
and extracting timeless moments from contemporary society.

The multi-series overall “documentary” project is a metaphor by which to address con-
temporary issues such as: urbanization and its consequences (last year the number of
people living in a city surpassed the number of those living in the country); social in-
equality; and the environmental condition of urban environments generally. It represents
a look into the contemporary metropolis, from a very specific and unconventional point
of view – that is, from the point of view of the tutelary citizen, who comprises the very
soul of urban society. The project documents the way we, the people, live and prosper
in a fast-changing world, and represents an encouragement for others to appreciate
the visual poetry hidden in routine, everyday life experience.

The present stage of the project incorporates three chapters: “Brooklyn Buzz”, “Milano
Buzz”, and “Sampa Buzz”. They were shot respectively in Brooklyn, New York, USA, Milan,
Italy, and São Paulo, Brazil: the New, the Old, and the Future World. As such, they repre-
sent three worlds – three metropolises and three different stages of the contemporary
urban society.

The ultimate goal of The Buzz Project is to build a global portrait of these modern me-
tropolises and to export the Buzz concept to as many cities as possible.



OBJECTIVE

The Buzz Project began with Brooklyn, followed quickly by Milan and São Paulo. Already
thousands of miles have been logged in traversing these metropolises, witnessing fra
ments of daily urban life, sometimes extreme and often contradictory. We intend to
move forward, extend our exploration and export the Buzz concept to as many cities as
possible. With the recent UN report on climate change focusing in part on urban popu-
lations, it is imperative to record the present state of urban life before the seas rise further
and populations and human settlements shift once again – a prospect that suggests a
perilous or precarious future already in evidence nonetheless in the first installments of
this project. A subtext of the larger project is that both modern and historic urban popu-
lations represent “migration” in its widest sense – migration through duress and/or other-
wise.

The Buzz Project is a work-in-progress that aims to build a visual narrative, with multiple
developments that might include a series of books, a web app, and short films. It is simu
taneously a subjective vision and a universal document constructed to prompt perhaps
unanswerable questions and to encourage deeper reflection about the present and the
near-future state of the human condition.

Proposed future destinations for the series will collect and archive images of what might
one day be perceived as the “tipping point” for civilization and the attendant crises as-
sociated with worldwide environmental and social upheaval.

PROPOSED
FUTURE DESTINATIONS

Cairo, Egypt Mumbai, India
Istanbul, Turkey Karachi, Pakistan
Moscow, Russia Tokyo, Japan
Beijing, China London, England



























MILANO BUZZ

MILANO BUZZ GAIA LIGHT ALESSANDRO COSMELLI

$ 40.00 | £ 25.00

















SAMPA BUZZ

São Paulo is the largest city in South America and in the whole southern hemi-
sphere. 17,300 km of urban ways, more than 1,300 urban bus lines and a fleet of
15,000 vehicles serve a metropolitan area of 20 million people, stretched on a
surface of more than 2,000 km2.
It is the paradigm of the contemporary city, incorporating all the contradictions
of the modern urban society.
Sampa Buzz is a visual exploration of São Paulo and its inhabitants, viewed from
a bus window. It is a photographic portrait that aims to capture the soul and en-
ergy of one of the most tumultuous and interesting metropolises on Earth.





























CONTACT

ALESSANDRO COSMELLI & GAIA LIGHT
865 EASTERN PARKWAY - BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11213
U.S.A.
ph. +1.646.943.2008
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.alessandrocosmelli.com
www.gaialight.com