Gomma Photography Grant 2024
Joe The Aviator
Photographer
Daniele Vita
Joe The Aviator
17 Jan, 2025
"Joe the Aviator is my personal story of the life of Giuseppe Botta. Giuseppe has never worked in his life, except for a total of one month as a warehouse worker and at a gas station. He has a degree in architecture, which he has never practiced. He suffers from Bipolar Disorder, alternating between states of intense euphoria and equally intense depression. Along with bipolar disorder, I believe he has many other undiagnosed issues, as Joe has never been continuously followed by a psychiatrist—a choice he made, leading him to live the life I narrate in my story. Joe the Aviator is one of his many characters, who, to this day, has disappeared thanks to the medication Lamotrigine. Joe is an aviator who flies over the skies of the city. From time to time, he lands and delights the passersby in the streets of Catania with his tenor songs. He then picks up a brush and begins to tell stories through his watercolors of migrating whales, flying ships, and smoking volcanoes. Then he falls and remembers that at aeronautical high school, they advised him to continue his studies as a pilot because, in flight, he would fall asleep and dream"
About the photographer
Daniele Vita
Daniele Vita was born in Italy, on 1975. He has been studying anthropology since 1995 and started photographing as an autodidact. 2003-06 he documented theater in Italian prisons, for two years he was finalist at the Hystrio Occhi di Scena prize. 2005 he documented the daily life of migrants for Roma City Council, this work was exhibited at the Sala Santa Rita in Rome. In 2007 the exhibition the Uffizi in Firenze for the Fratelli Alinari. 2008 he won the prize at the Toscana Foto Festival with his work Morale della Favola . In 2009 he was finalist in the Kiwanis prize, Italy Portfolio and exhibited at the Cifa a Bibbiena, he won the South East prize and exhibited at the Fotografia-Festival Internazionale di Roma . 2011 he exhibited at the Mia, Milan Image Art Fair and was a finalist in the Unicef ​​Poy Prize with Cojimies, work that awarded him the G. Tedde scholarship the following year. 2012 he was also invited to the collective exhibition Sguardi di un paese in crisi at Citerna Fotografia . 2014 he won the Castelnuovo Fotografia award with Borders # 0, a landscape project on the island of Lampedusa. 2015 he exhibited in Rome Rovine, la forza delle rovine a Palazzo Altemps , alongside masters of international photography. 2017 he took part in the collective exhibition Feeling Home at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.
2018 he was invited to the Med Photo Fest, exhibiting the work Suleymaniye Otopark. 2019 he won the Crediamo ai tuoi occhi award with the work la Settimana Santa in Sicilia and published the book with Fiaf. He won the 1801 passaggi - Mavi award and received an honorable mention at Unicef ​​Poy 2019. in 2021 he received the first WRA prize at the Lodi photo ethics festival, in the Future Generations category
