Emanating from Milan¹s unsavory peripheral zones, Ale Formenti’s raw, honest and alternately titillating and unsettling photographs of drinking, bleeding, crack smoking, vomiting, tattooed miscreants and hoodlums ­ along with female fellow travelers clad only in lilac-colored panties and gas masks ­ capture a punk rock skateboarding funhouse existence with a distinctly Italian flavor. Formenti finds his inspiration in everything that happens around him, taking pictures of his kind of people and doing it in the way that does their self-destructive high jinks, bad habits and unbridled sense of fun justice. He doesn’t produce “cool” images like those “that would make even a leper look nice” and isn’t interested in distorting reality but representing the fundamental nature of his subjects. These pictures blend the contagion of punk and skating with an inherently Italiansuburban angst and aimlessness reminiscent of Visconti and Pasolini’s fringe-dwellers (and even more to the irascible denizens of Ettore Scola’s Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi), with the comedic spirit of the incomparable Toto hovering in the background. Convicts freshly out of jail two weeks away from suicide, nine year old criminals-in-training, Pope-mocking skaters, bloody singers, and partial nudity are brought radiantly to life in an unmistakably Lombardian environment. Ritualistic drunkenness and insinuated loud abrasive music are offset and complimented by flyers on the wall, checkered tile floors, unused BMX bikes, and dreary postwar architecture. Having started as a photographer for the skateboard magazine XXX at the tender age of thirteen, Formenti had his eyes opened to an extremely unpopular other universe directly opposed to prevailing infatuations with soccer, manga cartoons and discothèques. That revelation brought on an embrace of the new strange that ran counter to all notions of what was acceptable and or even remotely fashionable. It was an opportunity to see that there was a bigger world out there, and it developed naturally since it was about immortalizing his peers doing what he considered the best things in the world. In addition there were the liberating pleasures of traveling, making new friends every weekend, skinned knees and hanging out in parking lots with all the most interesting delinquents. Scouring Milan’s few record shops that stocked punk fare and putting together a band with some untalented punk rockers achieved the goal: ‘A lot of fun without any expense.’ With the Dead Boyz Can’t Fly, Willy Wonkas, Teenage Schizoids and Porna and the Trendy Kids it was time to shoot ­ gigs with five people in attendance, sweat and spit, tours in the worst places in Italy and sleeping in squalor. Sangue (BLOOD), Sbocco (PUNK literally puke), Tipe (GIRLS ­literally chicks) offers copious evidence of this epiphany and discovery with eye-searing images that run the entire gamut of lively, fucked-up and exultant splendor described above. Mamma Mia!