This Is Us Paris
THIS IS US is a vast photographic project featuring people, places and relationships. The images tell the story of 20 teenagers who share their family’s migratory background and who, as a result, cannot apply for French citizenship until they are eighteen.
THIS IS US - PARIS is the second chapter of a project born in Rome in 2021, for which the portraits of 30 Roman teenagers were exhibited in the streets of the city, along the route of Tramway 19 - a line that connects and crosses the city centre and the suburbs - occupying spaces traditionally used for advertising posters.
After successfully completing the first edition of THIS IS US, following the project’s international and transnational vocation, Maria Di Stefano felt the desire and need to export the project elsewhere, while remaining focused on the same target, keeping the same methodology and the same questions, but changing the context: from Rome to Paris.
Starting from a socio-anthropological perspective, the project aims to reflect, through portraits of teenagers and their environment, on the way in which a context influences - socially, anthropologically, and culturally, but also from a
psychological point of view and in terms of urban development - the same migratory condition.
The aim is to overcome a stereotyped, trivialised and folkloric vision of the ‘foreigner’ by giving a face to the statistical percentages and offering the protagonists a space to tell their stories.
In 2023, Maria was awarded a research grant from the University of Paris 8, enabling her project to benefit from academic support.
THIS IS US - PARIS is the second chapter of a project born in Rome in 2021, for which the portraits of 30 Roman teenagers were exhibited in the streets of the city, along the route of Tramway 19 - a line that connects and crosses the city centre and the suburbs - occupying spaces traditionally used for advertising posters.
After successfully completing the first edition of THIS IS US, following the project’s international and transnational vocation, Maria Di Stefano felt the desire and need to export the project elsewhere, while remaining focused on the same target, keeping the same methodology and the same questions, but changing the context: from Rome to Paris.
Starting from a socio-anthropological perspective, the project aims to reflect, through portraits of teenagers and their environment, on the way in which a context influences - socially, anthropologically, and culturally, but also from a
psychological point of view and in terms of urban development - the same migratory condition.
The aim is to overcome a stereotyped, trivialised and folkloric vision of the ‘foreigner’ by giving a face to the statistical percentages and offering the protagonists a space to tell their stories.
In 2023, Maria was awarded a research grant from the University of Paris 8, enabling her project to benefit from academic support.
