Gibellina - Sicily

Here I am again.

During my Christmas holidays at home, Benny very intensely asked me to go and visit Gibellina, a small city in the province of Trapani(Sicily), as you might know my home town.

It’s known that Gibellina doesn’t exist anymore; it was completely destroyed during a tremendous earthquake on 15^th January 1968, where circa 400 people lost their lives and many more were injured.

Nowadays Gibellina Nuova is a new town reborn at 20km away from the old town and has become a real open air museum, as many famous Italian artists have installed their artworks across the streets.

The old town, also called "Il Grande Cretto", is now one of the biggest artwork in the world, as the famous Italian artist Alberto Burri in 1984 covered completely the ruins with concrete, preserving the city streetscape. 

Il Grande Cretto 12/2011

Gibellina Nuova 12/2011

Underground I

Exploring life under the ground!

La via di ritorno.

Si rifanno la valigie, lentamente, e con poca voglia.

Ti muovi quasi per forza per prendere quell'aereo, che ti riporta indietro, in quella citta' che non e' la tua, che mai sara' la tua, nonostante ci stai bene e ti abbia dato tanto.

Una citta' che all'inizio vedevi con un altro occhio, ma in fin dei conti, di certo non e' il posto in cui vuoi vivere.

Spiaggia, Trapani 2010.

Chasing a dream, Europe.

I have recently read Bilal(unlikely I couldn't find any English version), written by Fabrizio Gatti, an Italian journalist for the weekly magazine L'espresso.

The book tells the stories of many people who every day risk their life chasing the dream of reaching Europe, no matter how.

The price for they dreamed journey is expansive, nearly 2000 € (Euros), which will just pay the trip from the north coasts of Africa to the southern regions of Europe, such money will not include the money payed for the trip trough the Sahara desert and the money stole by the army and the police!

Working in all sorts of conditions and fields, even selling water for they fellow dreamers that will start the long trip trough the desert, those people do literally anything that will start their journey...

It's well known that many of them don't reach Europe nor the northern coast of Africa, paying the most expansive price, their LIVES.

Bilal also talk about the ones who finally arrive in Europe, facing the often very cloudy way to obtain a job and a life.

This is an extremely short description of the magnificent work of Fabrizio Gatti, but also another occasion to speak and remember the brave of those people.

The photos below show the boats which departing from the coasts of Tunisia and Libya, are used to cross the Sicilian channel and reach Lampedusa, also called "the door of Europe".

Europe door. Lampedusa, Sicily 11.

I passanti

I passanti. London 2011.

Riccardo ed Alessandro. London 2011

Coming back

In these days I often leave London to follow my project in Bedford, a small city in the east midlands of England, a small city full of stories. As sayed in the other post, this project talk about the differents generations of Italians living in the city, i am truly falling in love with those stories, stories of different times and especially different people, extraordinary people. It is a bit like when I listen into my grandfather's story, talking about his past!

On the train to London, I was reading this book, A fortune teller told me, written by Tiziano Terzani. It tell us about the writer's choice on avoiding to take any flight during the 1993, as a fortune teller in Hong Kong suggested him to not to, because in that year he would seriously risk his life. At the begin Terzani was very sceptic, especially for a journalist is not an easy choice, at the same time, he was very moved by this huge change in his life and in fact decided to travel in the hearth of Asia just with car, trains and even animals. At the end he was thrilled by this new experience and literally discovered a new world, meeting different cultures and enjoying more the beauty of Nature.

It is certainly true that when we use airplanes to travel from country to country, we don't realise that we fly over rivers, seas, millions of different cultures...but what important is arrive in the less time possible...that makes us BLIND.

It all can sounds a bit moralistic and irrational but I think nowadays we are more and more less able to take such decisions.

Midlands, England. 2011