Born in Ivory Coast in 1993, Mohamed left his country at the age of 14 due to the civil war, and undertook a very long journey through Guinea, Mali, Algeria, Libya and Malta to arrive in Italy in the 2010, at 17 years old.
Received at the day center for children Civico Zero in Rome, Mohamed studied Italian while working as a porter in a hotel. Thanks to his attendance at the center he discovered an innate vocation as a photographer and thus began his artistic career. For Mohamed, photography is a way of sharing, as an artistic form, but also a way to not forget the past and to tell the everyday, the continuous and sometimes imperceptible changes of every day.Today Mohamed lives and works in Rome, where he follows the boys of the Civic Zero center, and in 2017 he collaborated in the opening of two schools of photography for children in the suburbs of Bamako, Mali, and of Nairobi in Kenya. Thanks to the activity of these workshops it was possible to realize the exhibition “Free shots – Africa in the eyes of children”, at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
Porto Roma
The book tells the story of the city of Rome through the unique gaze of Mohamed Keita, a young photographer born in the Ivory Coast who now lives and works between Rome and Bamako (Mali). His images lead into a universe of hidden details, intimate urban landscapes and human presences that tell stories of everyday life and resilience. Readers are invited to immerse themselves in Keita’s continuous wandering around Rome, in search of the subject to immortalize, to discover it on a human scale, with its imperfections, wonders and secrets. The title of the book, Porto Roma, reflects the photographer’s personal vision, giving the public back the Rome experienced by Keita through his research: not only the eternal city but a port of the soul, where the ancient dialogues with the present, humanity merges with the silence of spaces. Porto Roma begins with some of the photographs taken by Keita during the first ten years spent in Rome. It continues with his most recent photographic research, Prima-Dopo, which documents his incessant return to the same places to capture their changes and suggestions: each photograph becomes a meditation on time and the changes that transform places, on the fleeting shadows that tell different stories, on the faces that blend into the landscape, redefining it. His flâneur’s gaze transforms every urban glimpse into a work to be contemplated. The spontaneity of the shot, the play of light and shadow, the often overlooked details become key elements of his visual poetics.
Mohamed Keita "Porto Roma"
Hardcover, 30x22 cm, 96 pages | Drago Publisher
ISBN 9788898565627
