G. Caporale Institute 2001 Calendar

The 2001 Calendar

Photographs: Vincenzo Ammazzalorso

The images of the real landscape of Abruzzo and Molise shown in this first calendar, celebrating the sixty years of the Institute's work, are intended to pick out and characterize glimpses in which it is possible to capture significant moments of a contemporary world which preserve evidence of traditional paths and views.

This is not a romantic reading of the past, but a lucid analysis of an eternal present, which recovers primary aspects of our cultural identity that still live on in the collective memory.

Thus the flocks at Campo Imperatore (September) and the zero-grazed sheep (February) no longer tread the old sheep-tracks, but still maintain their D'Annunzian air, just as the old mill among the flowers (May), which looks as if it had come out of a picture by Michele Cascella, still shows today the useful imprint of a susceptible presence.

And thus the cultivated fields and the plants are characterized in the most typical expression of their function (March and April) or in their constituent geometries (January and June), to capture the importance of a world in contact with the world of man, even in the performance of complex linear tasks (July). Even the image of an old fish-trap (August) loses its benevolent, elegiac tone, while still retaining to the full its emblematic theatricality. Mountain paths, suitable for walkers (October and November) or with an arcane appeal (cover), and a thickly-wooded area (October) testify to the photographer's preferential interest in trees, and preserve the sparseness, the gentleness and the lack of tension which accompany such a serene and pregnant reading of the environment.

But, in all the images, a desire to protect the landscape always accompanies the scientific character of the vision. This phenomenological characterization connects ideally with the aims of the G. Caporale Experimental Zooprophylactic Institute for Abruzzo and Molise, which in its sixty years of existence has always been committed to scientific research based on the closest examination of the evidence, and to vigilant attention to the defence of its values which, despite the apparent revolution in the pace of social life, remain as the solid and immutable basis of its direction in life.

Nerio Rosa