A Tale Told through Images

The article was first published online in January 2002. Text and photos by Vincenzo Battista. Leggi la versione italiana: Un Racconto per Immagini

The article is an ethnographic and visual biography of emigration, a biography which however only slightly touches a social milieu deeply rooted in its “signs”. The pictures summarize some values of folk culture poignant with untold stories. Small niches, in a word, of innermost realities that the photo unveils and reveals to us.

The images reconstruct human time, that is “memory”, with a montage like in a filmed sequence, to reveal fragments: attitudes and behaviors that make us aware of the highly symbolic dimension of old pictures, almost cult objects; objects which were jealously kept since they belonged to the ancestors, objects in the hamlets abandoned because of emigration, but which still harbor, untouched, memories of Abruzzo peasant and pastoral culture.

When in 1981, at the age of 24, I made this reportage, developing my black and white pictures by myself, I probably wanted to show the powerful representation obtained through a photographic medium in reading and explaining the life of local communities, exactly as they see themselves, their motifs, their places. The pictures, taken in Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Fossa, Collepietro, Roio, all of them villages in the Province of L’Aquila and finally in the regional capital, reflect a very special dimension, connected to folk culture and its models of life, the “areas” of beliefs and superstitions, customs and traditions, to the very house that harbors the “ancestors’ memories”.

Finally, allow me some comments on this communication experience, novel at the time when it was proposed, born from the cooperation with the team of the website abruzzo2000, currently a legacy section of Italy Heritage – Abruzzo. Starting from the year 2000 we published a monthly Ezine “In Cammino – Along the Way” with my texts and photos and English translation made by the website team. The project met with great enthusiasm among our readers and especially the descendants of Abruzzese abroad through emails and posts, confirming the cultural value of the project.