Emak: our power, your passion
Ten years have passed since my first assignment at Emak.
I had an important task: to create a series of photographs that would capture the image of a modern, efficient company with a human dimension, a company where product quality depends above all on the quality of the people who create it. I decided to work with black and white film: I like to think the colour is in the imagination of the "viewer".
For this reason, ten years ago, I travelled to every part of the company, opened every door I came across, walked along all the corridors and climbed all the stairs. I arrived early in the morning when, at first light, the first workers arrived, and I went home late at night,in the dark, when the people who never stopped adding new ideas to the products went home.
With my lenses I studied the faces of the men and women behind these red and orange machines , and I sat among them during their breaks.
I immersed myself completely in this world, where the latest generation carbon steel and aluminium die casting, light but resistant plastics, rods and pistons, are transformed into perfect machines.
I saw their hands run expertly over the keyboards,of their computers, gently grasp the blades, that make our lawns more beautiful, I saw their faces looking with satisfaction at a new piece to be tested and smiling when their instruments told them "it's OK".
Everything starts with an idea. This idea is created in the minds of people seated around a table, it passes through the hands of the designers at their computers and is "hammered out" by technicians for days and nights in test chambers. Finally the idea reaches the workbenches of the workers, who, at the end of the line, close it safely in its cardboard packaging. All of this so that, somewhere in the world, someone can do the opposite: someone will open the packaging, turn on the machine and smile will inevitably appear on their face.
Ten years on, they asked me to write a new chapter with my camera. I retraced my steps, walked again along corridors old and new, and opened new doors: I found a company that had changed greatly, where many more machines are made, machines which are more and more reliable and safer. But the way of working is still the same: the same determination is visible on the faces staring at the computer screens, the same confidence in the movements of the workers, and when the siren sounds at the break, people still sit on benches with a cup of coffee and the satisfied smile of people who have, quite simply, done their job.
From the foreword of "our power, your passion" PICTURES BY G.M. CODAZZI - May 2007
