Juggling Life is a photo reportage on the life of two Greek street artists who have left work and families currently living in Rome, Italy. Aimilios and Regas have chosen a difficult lifestyle on the margins of society, in order to pursue their own inclinations and dreams. became jugglers. They live in a caravan in the suburbs of Rome and live by their "hat" and by the spontaneous support of the public.
“If street art does not run in the family but it is a grown-up choice, juggling somehow always implies, for many among us, a form of break up from what you were before, the search for a new identity, at times the beginning of an actual spiritual journey" (A. Scrofani, Juggling Magazine).
Emilio and Regas, friends and colleagues, aged 21 and 25, decided to say goodbye to their family, job, friends, radically change their lives on the Greek island of Rhodes to follow a dream, to become jugglers and learn the circus arts in Italy.
They have undertook the arduous road of those who believe in one and only one destiny for their lives.
They perfectly know that they were born to be circus performers and to entertain the audience. So they started a journey that took them away from homeland and family and that obliged them to learn quickly a new language.
They bought a second-hand caravan and with many difficulties they arrived in Rome where they live in the street, up to settle down at Forte Prenestino (an old fort occupied, in the suburbs of Rome), where they find hospitality and electricity to warm up during the winter.
It was a path made of challenging auditions like the one to become members of the prestigious Roman School of Circus. They success and starting from that time on they have worked hardly for eight hours a day and their skill has definitely developed to a professional level. But what makes the difference is their passion: after the school they do again and again their street performance to entertain and to make ends meet.
They live by their "hat" and by the spontaneous support of the public, but currently, in Italy, the legislation presiding over street art is a sort of no man’s land: it is not mendicancy nor authorized performing. The artist can still be fined in case s/he does not comply with the bureaucratic procedures. Legislation, and control of the authorities, in fact, make it difficult for these artists perform and earn the money they need to live.
They know for sure that they would not like to do other in their life, and that, if their art would not have made them rich, it has certainly made them free.
Their lives are unlike each other but intertwined, gathered around clubs, traffic lights, in a square or in the evening, after hours of training, in a look, in front of a pasta dish, a glass of wine, with a candle and a few friends. Aimilios and Regas choose Rome for this span of life, but the world’s streets are and will always be their native place. A caravan is their home, enabling them to feel free to “do†and “beâ€.