Head along the Miami Beach boardwalk, and you will stumble across the Fontainebleau Hotel, where Claudia Pajewski's The Hands of the City was born. L'Aquila stood silent and still for years, in the wake of the 2009 earthquake and the poor political management that followed. Suddenly, three years ago, the reconstruction began. Cranes sprouted everywhere, forming a channel between the destroyed city and the sky.
A city however, doesn't rebuild itself. It is rebuilt by thousands of people, thousands of hands - as Pajewski's title suggests.
Still today, most of the 'urban humanity' of L'Aquila is made up of these builders. They repair the buildings and act as a human counterbalance to the citizens of L'Aquila, many of whom find it hard to return to the city after such a long time. These men arrive at dawn and leave at sunset, sleeping in dormitories close to work. Most of them have left other countries, other lands, to come and rebuild an ancient city from scratch. Pajewski's photographs tell a story inextricably linked to the empty city gradually filling up, a city that has lost its urban fabric but is fighting to start anew.
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