G. Caporale Institute 2003 Calendar

The 2003 Calendar

Photographs: Vincenzo Ammazzalorso

The images of Vincenzo Ammazzalorso propose for 2003, a year dedicated to the mountains, an itinerary which starts out from a high plain and reaches places where the views bear the imprint of hard-working traditions or reveal tranquil and uncontaminated glimpses.

While maintaining the scientific character of a reading of the territory, these images are linked by a reflection which evokes a sense of quiet elegy. The poetry in Ammazzalorso's work lies in its tranquillity without resignation, in a recall to traditional values which make us want to relive a not-far-distant past, not as a flight from reality, but as a counterbalance to the universal virtuality which conditions the contemporary world. Poetry as human reflection, without regrets and without nostalgia, but without the anxiety of the present.

The snow-covered uplands of the Vezzola gorges, from the old mill with its cascades to the abandoned mill framed with poplars, with the beast of burden and the little mules beside a house with the traditional balcony, the numerous waterfalls, gushing forth or buried in the greenery, the beechwoods in the Abruzzese and Molisan mountains, all breathe an air of gentleness and fullness. There is no lack of reminders of the more poetic and traditional aspects of the shepherd's life, whether in the midday standstill, or in the collective character of a movement which recalls D'Annunzio, or in the half-felt presence of animals in an abandoned sheep-pen.

Ammazzalorso thus expresses his nature-culture relationship, seeking to gather the hidden details of everyday experience in his direct vision of what remains in the collective memory of life lived in the fields or the woods, in places, that is, not urbanized and linked to material culture.

Nerio Rosa