text by Salvatore D’Agostino
Between 1951 and 1953 the writer and photographer Fosco Maraini, together with the editor Diego De Donato started their trip from Campania to Sicily. His intent was to «put between two covers all, just all our South: magnificence and horrors - writes Maraini - middle class and farmers, sailors, bishops and Mafioso's, everything, i say everything». But, after collecting a huge amount of materials, the project that should have been called Nostro Sud, was abandoned because of a wearing down «owerpowered by the wealth of things, the richness of the aspects, the multitude of faces and destinies, we end up to the immense fire of South».
Fosco Maraini: Piana degli Albanesi (1952) and La torre nuvolaria near Termini Imerese (1952) |
Nostro Sud, if published, it would have been the first narrative for images of the South, just because, before the ambitious Maraini's project, photography in Sicily was used to serve something else instead of being an autonomous tale.