Even if I'm definitely not a photographer, I've always been fascinated by photography since I was a young kid. I've been taking tons of photos wherever I've been traveling in all these years, but it's been only in Istanbul that my perspective on this Art changed completely.

I felt in love with this incredible city and its people and I've been collecting a huge amount of photos (with my old iphone only) in the year and a half I've been living there, documenting every day life, the workers, the teyzes, the cats, etc.

I was sending many of these photos to my mom in Italy to show her that life in Istanbul is not as bad as many foreign medias were trying to show in a very Turko-phobic way. I was trying to explain to her that there are a lot of very normal and cool people in Istanbul, very mixed, very different, a little bit weird sometimes maybe but also very peaceful, welcoming, curious and positive.

That's why I titled this project "MammaLiTurki! - How to explain Istanbul to my mom" (a.k.a. "Mamma, li Turchi!"), that means something like "Omg, Mom! The Turks are coming!", an old way to say that's still popular in Italy and has its roots into the raids that Ottomans were doing in Southern Italy from the Middle Eve on.

Thanks to many friends of mine that are professional or amateur photographers and saw my photos on Instagram and pushed me hard to put together this book, I took courage and started to seriously work on that.

Some days ago I won a coupon from Saal Digital and they give me the chance to print this very first draft of "MammaLiTurki!" for free. I made a very quick choice through my hard-drives, picked up these 60 photos for this photo-booklet, put them together with the software of this company and after a couple of days I got this present you can see in the video here:

First of all I have to say that Saal Digital made a great product and I'm really thankful because the quality of the paper and the final outcome are really high. I couldn't imagine a better work and I really recognize the seriousness and kindness that always feature this company and their employees. The delivery has been super fast and precise as well.
I definitely recommend Saal Digital to print a great photo-booklet and I'm looking forward to try also some other of their products. Chapeau!

On my side, I see that there're still so many details I need to work on and I'll keep on doing that in the next months. But the final result is not that bad: I'm very happy with this very first version and I believe it's a really good start for me. Thanks to all my lovely supporters that are giving me good feedbacks on this and keep on pushing me! :-)

To keep on following "MammaLiTurki!" and my other projects:
nio_zeroplastica
www.djnio.net

MammaLiTurki! - A very first draft of my first book.