Never too blue

Gloomy skies, never too blue, crowded with clouds, portraits of northern vistas. Heavy clouds move upon us, blending blues and greys, waves calmly reach land bringing a sense of relative quietude. 

Isle of White. England 2014 ©AS

Brighton. England 2014 ©AS

Brighton. England 2014 ©AS

What it will be?

What it will grow trees and happiness? An Italian songwriter writes in his song. Is there any other place rather than nature where you could find peace and happiness? 

This is one of the few places where I find relief, silence and walking barefoot in the garden is a real feeling.

Megisti-Castellorizo

The way back starts on a ferry, leaving Castellorizzo, once called Megisti.

An other beauty of the Mediterranean sea, a Greek island, but closer to Turkey, where houses have an Italian facade and people are often from much further places.

I can't hide that we went there thanks the beautiful movie "Mediterraneo", directed by Gabriele Salvatores. The movie tells the events of a funny and scruffy troop of Italian soldiers that intends occupy the island, thankfully with very poor results.

Islands, however isolated, are always been the passage of new cultures and costumes, but also war and abuses. In fact Castellorizzo has often changed flag, as it used to be Italian, for a while French and also British. Although the island experienced different dominations and a terrific fire, has never changed its colours, the blue of its sea and the green of its flora.

Between jasmine tree and buganville the life is simple, nothing closer to our times, actually it seems to travel back in time. There you realise that we don't need much to live.

Kids play by the edge of the port, probably as fifty years ago, simple games bonded with nature and the landscape.

While the ferry heads north, i am still surrounded by the big blue.

I will miss it here.

Winters

I am just outside Shoreditch tube station, it's a regular day in east London, black cabs, bikes, buses hit the road under the usual grey sky. I am going to apply for my visa, I pass trough the lively streets of the east-end, bars are crowded, my first step to a further EAST.

A walk on the edge between two beautiful Italian regions, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, silence and nature bring us to untouched places. It's nearly the end of the year, the mountains's peaks are white and touch a blue sky that we very rarelly see in The Big Smoke(London).

Again walking and walking trough Arbatskaya, I arrived, I am in the heart of Moscow. The city is hard, cold, people run from one place to another with indifference, wrapped up in their heavy coats. I constantly talk with people, although very few speak my language, anyway it's always a surprise, a new story. Living an other city, an other story.

Those winters are almost gone, I am now heading for a brighter chapter.

Dies Irae. Paolo Pellegrin.

I felt that i had to share this beautiful thought found on the book DIES IRAE by Paolo Pellegrin-for the unlucky ones who don't know him-here the biography.

This is just a small piece of a very interesting interview/discussion with Roberto Koch(Contrasto founder) and I strongly believe that those sentences should be stick in every photographers's mind.
  

"Ever since I began working in photography in the early nineties, I've heard about this golden age, which is that of LIFE. 

But personally, during the nineties I did very little work for newspapers because I was still in a self-imposed training phase. It's a phase, apart from the rest, that's never completely finished and I imagine that will continue forever...It's just about trying to find my own voice and let it become a written photography. In this sense, I happen to think of photography as foreign language. Learning to connect with this voice and speak through photography, learning to express oneself through this language-listening to the rules and to instincts at the same time-is something and complex. The question isn't how to take good photos, It's how to take good photographs that succeed to do a number of things simultaneously: to document, to transmit information, and to strike emotion chord. Initially I studied architecture, then I took some photography courses and then I put myself through a period of eight, maybe ten years of rigorous training where i had to learn to express myself in this language of photography.

For years i worked on this-on the gaze, vision-shooting by day and printing by night."

PP 

Москва-Moscow

I wouldn't start the year in a better way. My last experience in Moscow it's been intense and full of emotions, photographing and exploring a new world. I have walked trough the cold night and day

to see more, to know more. To live.

Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov-Moscow 2013.

Sole di Settembre

Beautiful September. The sun is still hot while the first rains arrive, the great change of nature. We head the cold, we leave behind the fatigue of a year preparing for a new begin.

 

September 2012. Trapani, Sicily.

Viaggi in Emilia

Old country houses sit on the vast flat green fields that surround beautiful ancient cities, filled with history, culture and LIFE. 

This is a series of photos took during my recent trips to the region of Emilia Romagna, situated in the north of Italy. There are countless reasons to love such place, and definitely one of those it's the food.

Finally Africa.

 Yes, I say finally because I always wanted to travel and experience Africa personally, not as I conventionally seen it.

 I went for one week in Akosombo, a village not very far from Accra, the capital of Ghana, with Alessandro, a close friend who actually made this trip possible.

Let’s face that when we talk about Africa, we mention something bigger than a continent, as someone (R. Kapuschinski) used to say “Africa is a universe”.

It’s very CLEAR that those six days in Ghana did not give me enough time and knowledge to understand or criticize the issues of a country. My personal idea is that Ghana can be much more beautiful then it is already.

More photos are available here.

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

Solo?

In a restaurant, London 2010.

In the last weeks I dedicated my energies on something really special, some Hidden Voices...

It all started on a Sunday, a man walked in my house, he's one of the people who is responsible of the flat...we started talking about everything, how expensive is london, all about his family and the meanwhile we talked about the Italian community of Bedford, which i was totally unaware of.

I started doing some research, and i found out that Bedford have the biggest Italian community in Uk, after London.

There are many stories that I would like to tell you...

© Antonio Sansica 2011. All rights reserved.

If you have got something to say..

If you want convince the world on the existence of God, if you wanna talk about the ending of the world in 2012, if you want to express your freedom of speech....The Speaker's corner is the place to be.

Today I went to the legendary Speaker's corner of Hyde Park (London), for over 150 years every Sunday people meet up to express their thoughts and ideas about all topics you can possibly imagine.

It is definitely the place to be, you will go trough very serious discussions and also the most hilarious theories of this society.

This lady was impressive...

See you next Sunday!

Postcards from Barnes

Just some photos that show the beauty of Barnes's landscape, Barnes is a riverside suburb of southwest London. I like to consider these photos as postcards and nothing more.

Barnes, London. 2011