Tropographics - Filippo Bardazzi and Laura Chiaroni (SooS Chronicles)
A trópos is a recurring element. A trópos is a motif in narrative. (Yes, also in visual narrative). A trópos is a cliché. Everything can become a trópos, but each of them is not present as itself. It is there to direct to something else. A trópos keeps changing: that's what makes it always the same.
Tropographics is a project by Filippo Bardazzi and Laura Chiaroni—SooS Chronicles. It is definitely not a series of beautiful pictures found by chance on the web. And it isn't either a collection of random weird scenes. This is instead our trip through landscape and photography, in search of tropes around the world. The archive will be constantly updated and expanded with new categories.
All images have been taken using Google Street View.
BUS STOP
Bus stops are small reproductions of our lives. You stand or sit there waiting for a ride that can bring you to your final destination. During this wait you share a limited space with unknown people. Sometimes you talk to others, sometimes you just ignore them because you are busy thinking or because you just want to scroll through your phone with no particular reason. We have two friends that we've always known as a couple. They first met at a bus stop 15 years ago. They are now married with children. Life is often unpredictable.
COCA-COLA
Coca-Cola is likely the only thing you can order in any place of the world you happen to be. In the middle of the desert or in the jungle, on the snowy mountains or on a hammock in front of the Caribbean Sea, a can of Coke is always available, with the same taste, the same packaging, the same bubbles. First sold in pharmacies, now you can find it anywhere except (maybe) pharmacies. Its distribution is so widespread thanks to an extensive advertising coverage, showing the world famous red and white logo. Even Santa Claus loved this soft drink so much that he started wearing these colours as an uniform for his job.
DOG
It is said that a dog is a man's best friend. Yeah, maybe. We don't have enough evidence for that. Surely they are everywhere and they populate cities and outskirts together with us for centuries. Most of human activities can be done with a dog on our side. Dogs sometimes act in ways that look mysterious to us: we don't know what they say when they bark or growl in the streets and it's funny how they get in touch by sniffing each other's butts. They are faithful but there is no way you can eradicate their freedom to sleep on a dusty roadside and their will to run behind a passing car.
