Theatres of war
These images are part of a series created in 2014 by commission of the Council Presidency to celebrate the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. The complete work is contained in the photographic book Teatri di guerra (Theatres of war), which includes, among others, a text by Prof. Mario Isnenghi.
Also, in 2014, a selection of forty large photographs was exhibited at the Museo del Vittoriano in Rome and at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice.
I started photographing these mountains many years ago in black and white. I love to connect the themes landscape and history. I have always been influenced by 19th century photography, from Carleton Watkins' great American wild landscapes to images taken in Egypt by the Beato brothers.
I worked in the mountains for over two months, walking and climbing alone and, in truth, in the hours of the day when you shouldn't be up there alone. But it was part of the adventure.
The mixture of wild landscape, history and archaeology is my preferred subject. My photography tries to be as powerful as that heroic landscape. I am not worried about the overwhelming power of the sublime, of the romantic. I am aware that most contemporary landscape photography has a bad relationship with these moods, but I love them. I like beauty, especially when it conveys a harsh, rough sweetness. The ultimate result is simply wonderful, a kind of vision taken "to the limit". Severe, implacable, beyond any rhetoric.
