Nostalgia Ti Frega is a photographic exploration of memory, identity, and place focusing on the emigrant community of a Sicilian village destroyed by an earthquake 40 years ago. The project aims to capture a sense of the virtual space the village now inhabits within the community, the memories and stories that form this space, and the role of photographs in its construction. The intention is to create photographic objects, both digital and analog, that depict and engage the community of villagers and their descendents, and allow them to interact with and experience a sense of the 'village' today.
As earthquakes go, the one that struck my father's village of Salaparuta in 1968 was not a particularly strong one, and despite the tragic human causalities and destruction of property, did not come close to the catastrophic earthquakes Sicily's urban centres had previously experienced. But unlike cities, which by their very nature are in constant transformation, and where destruction and redevelopment are a customary expectation, a village - the small hub of human life in a largely unpopulated landscape - is an entirely different entity. Its physical presence - its squares and meeting points, churches and cafes, avenues and back-alleys - is an intrinsic element to how its inhabitants socialise and interact, differentiate between the familiar and the unknown, and understand themselves and their history. The physical reality of a village becomes a cultural reference point to the community that call it home.
So when a village is destroyed and laid desolate, and, as in the case of Salaparuta, its people scatter around the globe, what takes its place?
Many years after its destruction, and despite the geographic dispersal of its inhabitants, a sense of Salaparuta persists. Not as the same physical entity (at least not an inhabitable one) but certainly as something somewhere in the hearts and minds of its people. It is this 'something' and 'somewhere' that Nostalgia Ti Frega seeks to explore.
The aim is to create emotionally evocative photographic objects that bridge both the old world and the new. A set of limited edition photographs, printed on fine art paper, and presented in hand-crafted wooden boxes, will interact with a digital photobook deployed on a tablet touch-screen platform (the iPad). As a digital object, the photobook will include features that allow users in distant locations to comment on photographs and make their own contributions to the unfolding history of the village and its people.
(Click here for a broad visualisation of the user flow).
Although not everyone from Salaparuta is directly related by blood, to be a Salitano means to be part of an extended family of paesani (villagers) and to be treated as such. This extends to descendants as well, so that a child or grandchild (or even great-grand-niece-twice-removed) is considered a member of the village, even if they have never been there. Nostalgia Ti Frega is specifically aimed at this group of people - a transnational, hybrid community, scattered around the globe, living seperate and culturally diverse lives, but linked through a shared history.