“There’s something about coming across a photography book and not being able to put it down. Sometimes it takes just one image to feel the adrenaline of a moment that you feel wholly identified with, that could be your own. It is only then that you start noticing other details, like the name of the photographer and the caption, the paper and the quality of the printing, that provided a door to another universe. That’s how I felt when I first saw Bruce Davidson’s photo of a teenage couple, from his 1959 Brooklyn Gang series, in a bound compilation of photographs in my high school library. It was one of many images that would inspire and broaden my understanding of reality across geographic and generational lines. So when Paulo, the publisher of this book, told me about his project The Street Is Watching and asked me for suggestions on photographs to include, I jumped at the opportunity of revisiting subjects that have always enthralled me: youth and subcultures, social and cultural movements which are constantly unfolding, and the photographers who document them. They are artists in their own right, sharing experiences and perspectives that add to the collective memory of our times. How would we tell the story otherwise?” – Ethel Seno, The Street Is Watching

“The street is the memory chip of today’s civilization. It is real. There is credibility in the night. The ‘street’ never sleeps. The Street is invisible (shen)dopE. It never stops watching, it never stops swinging in its endless cycle. It’s where cultures meld. Where raw meets sleek; where anarchy sets the pace of Kairos &Kaos. It’s where the deafening drumbeat of WTF Zeitgeist wakes to find it has survived to hear the vibes of the arcane on the civil society battlefields. In Italy, the streets are called strade. At Drago, St.Ra.De. stands for Sistema Radicale Democratico or the System of Democratic Radicalism, which is how we interpret the neo-Jacobin evolution of civil society in the time of N:A:R:C:O.” – Paulo Von Vacano, The Street Is Watching

“The mainstream of minorities dic(k)tates where under is over and over is under. It reflects today’s hardcore overground that is the only limes against the Matrix of a rotten system where the carcASS of its sweet dreams rots. Their intensity beats like a hyped pulse through the veins of society. They are fluid. They left the palace dim. The neO oligar chic feudalistic class is the Sum of the yin(h)ung’s society. It no longer rules- but hools. When we say Il Re e Morto or Viva il Re we mean the king is dead or long live the king. But our “re” we to re-vival, re-make, re-mix, re-styling and re-volution. Drago SurfS the liquid society’s wave of the second pop (re)evolution. We glimpse the dawn of the new veiled millennium. We clutch the frozen (r)age of the Ne.M.I.Si.S. stuck in time once again in an eternal cycle. We hear the deafening screams of the sign language of the remix of the pop culture the Re.P. – the Remix of Photography, of Pop. ReP means Remix of Pop Cultures, it means Revolution of Cultures or Rhizome of cultures where pandora’s box was penetrated with the special meth odds of the SJs. ” – Paulo Von Vacano, The Street Is Watching

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