An interesting feature of Milan, for me personally, was the very prominent presence of armed military personnel on the streets. They were part of “Operazione Strade sicure” – an ongoing initiative to use armed forces to preserving public order and to fight crime. This is certainly not typical of North America, and I thought it would be interesting to photograph the soldiers. After all, it would be a kind of “men at work” type of a photo series.
However, for some reason I found it awkward to take photos of the soldiers most of the time. I guess, this was some kind of self-censorship at work, where I was projecting my expectations of not being allowed to take pictures of security-related activities (e.g. near luggage-screening areas in airports, some bridges in US, etc.) To be fair, I have never seen any signs prohibiting photography of the Italian soldiers, and they gave an impression that they probably would not mind a photo opportunity.
