Trams of Poetry in Milan

The local residents love their trams so much that they organize collections of signatures when the local public transport company (ATM) wants to send the oldest ones into retirement and have maintained continuous dialog with the company that has managed the city’s public transport for 91 years, including praise, criticism and advice for improvement.

Poetry in Milan is crouching on a heaving tram with your umbrella still dripping and slowly allowing your thoughts to unwind on the tracks

People between Lines is a photo book by the company that carries passengers around the city, gifted in digital and paper format to associates, friendly companies and guests.

Between the lines, on the mezzanines, behind the wheel, behind the scenes, fixing broken parts, helping customers, renewing season tickets or re-issuing them to the absent-minded who lose them, there is a sea of frantic looking faces, as is usual among those who rush to catch the bus, tram or subway. Eighty-four of these ten thousand people at ATM were photographed by Gabriele Micalizzi and also described more intimately by Enrico Del Buono as “unique elements capable of keeping the city moving.”

Such as Emanuela Diana, 20 - an electrical engineer who came to Milan from Naples with her father, who is a driver - who loves to “get her hands dirty, to get the chance to discover new amazing electronic things in cars.” Or Michele Maragliotta, instructor for electric bus drivers, small and slim with such delicate hands on the wheel of a thirteen-ton beast.

She started 23 years ago and has seen how her profession has changed: “The number of women has grown gradually and my greatest satisfaction is seeing after the three weeks of the course that aspiring drivers pull closer and closer to the curb, brake more and more gently and help people in difficulty more and more safely.”

Let's hear how Milo De Angelis' journey ends: “Everything is like/always/but it is not of this earth and with the palm of your hand, you wipe the steam from the glass, you examine the mirrors that run/on the rails and when you smile at her dressed in burgundy/who hurriedly climbs down the two steps/you make a/gesture with your hand/that looked like a greeting but it's a goodbye.”