A place that guarded the “childhood of the world”. The great signature of Panorama, who knows the south well, dedicates a passionate essay to him. For images, memories, nostalgia.
Once upon a time there was the South tells, as in fairy tales, an era that is no longer ours: the south of peasant civilization and numerous families, the devoted and superstitious South, archaic and “fatigator”, the south of processions, infinite marriages, heartfelt funeral, prolonged mourning, country life, life at the edges of the sea, of the clubs, of the beard or the countryside. The Community south, animated and taciturn, of long silences and wide conversations. Worlds disappeared, or on the way of disappearance, of which we try to save the memory and its last traces, before the silence, the night or the oblivion falls.
The motive for this work is twofold: Understanding how much life is inside a photograph, in those people, at that time, in those faces that are no longer there and understanding what happens within us when we see, we review and save a photo of the past; What effects and affections arouses an image.
A photo is also a sign of recognition and gratitude towards the past. The South is the world of yesterday par excellence, the childhood of the world, the province of the universe; It is our antiquity, which sometimes unfortunately is only backwardness if not primitive age, the transition from ancient to the antiquated is short; The photographic album is the land of feelings, the place of shadow and light of nostalgia, the house of the myths this time in their domestic and family reduction. In the photograph we find the poetic geography of the south.
The photographic journey we made is in black and whiteand this perhaps screeches with the sunny and colorful south, which expresses light and lively polychrome. On the other hand, black and white portrays faces that seem souls, characters, biographies, internal forms tempered by life. Black and white seems almost a profound x -ray, even of its surfaces. And gives magical distance to the lost time. Black and white has an evocative power of the light and night of which the color photo is only a pale, banal representation.
The “Once upon a time” also applies to the photograph to which I dedicate some reflections in conclusion of the book: what about the photo in the time of digital, selfie, of multiplication to the infinity of images? All photographers, no photographer. Too many images no memory.
On this trip there are no famous faces and historical events. It is the impersonal and choral history of an era through its anonymous inhabitants, the life of ordinary people, the daily life of a world. The intent is to rescue the faces of dear or unknown people, to preserve the memory of how they were. «When we are far from this small country where we were born and live, when we finally feel like being born in love and nostalgia for the things that surround us today and mortally bore us (…) that will truly be our country: because the distance will give sweet cadences to the boredom of today and angustia; And it will become a little love what is now impatience and reaction »So writes Leonardo Sciascia in focus in the sea. It is the retroactive love, nostalgic, posthumously, of those who now love only at a distance and recognize from afar what they did not recognize from inside and closely. Reflection that matches perfectly even in the reverse direction with the best known one of Pavese: «A country takes, it was only for the taste to leave. A country means not being alone, knowing that in people, in plants, in the earth there is something of yours, that even when you are not there it remains waiting for you ». (The moon and bonfires).
You need a place of departure, to abandon it and then remember it as your origin, the staple from which you have moved away. Sciascia and Pavese, a southern writer, a North writer, but linked by a double thread: the province, with his small world, and the countryside, the carnal link with the earth, almost a part of his body. In both the distance mitizes, the distance increases the magic of a bond, otherwise lived on the spot with a certain impatience and a great desire to leave.
The child who grew up in the country, at least until the economic boom, who in the south came late, indeed in deferred, he actually lived in three real worlds: he knew the country – the square, the course, the houses, the shops, the villagers – but also knew the countryside, the animals, the peasant civilization, up to a few decades prevalent and contiguous to the country and interactive with the village; And finally, in the coastal countries, he knew the sea a stone’s throw from home, the marine universe, the fish, the curls, the mussels, the octopus, the nasse, the nets, the bathrooms in the sea, the swims. And the same thing goes for those who had the mountains a stone’s throw from home. But not only.
The villagers knew more worlds for the simple reason that the numerous families – expanded, elongated, open to friends, comparis and acquaintances – put you in permanent comparison with worlds other than yours: The old, adults, children. There was a vertical connection between generations that today is much more difficult, stunted. Then the country’s experience was multisensory. There was not only the word and sight, there was also the sense of smell, between smells and stinks, the strong taste of the true flavors; The touch, or the contact of proximity, to touch each other in addition to the talk, very in use among the people of the South, the wandering on. The houses in the village were flourishing life centers; People entered and came out constantly, they were called from the balconies, windows and streets, they knocked suddenly, they came to see you without warning and without appointments, you didn’t plan or book the visits. Numerous families involved generational swarms in continuous transit in their homes. Open companies, other than closed.
In short, the world of the country was richer, various and lively than the telematic and internettaro one of today. There was more humanity and warmth of life. Indeed, life in its simplicity seemed to be born, growing and ending spontaneously; And there was free life, which means by grace, where primary goods are accessible at hand, without buying, selling, going to the shop. No desire to go back, in that world there was also misery, hardness, harshness, inconvenience and true poverty; However it would not be possible and we would no longer be able to live there. But leave us the sweet taste to remember it, with an harmless veil of nostalgia.
