What are your first memories of Lake Bolsena?
Gian Marco Sanna (GS): My grandfather is a native of this region, located a few hours drive north of Rome. Since I was a child I came every summer to Bolsena for holiday. Many memories of my childhood are linked to this place. The lake has always scared me; the feeling that there is something big below, the fear of going underwater or simply the feeling of being observed. During summers, with friends, we always went to bathe at night. It's a very strange feeling, and different energy compared to the day...
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
Recently you moved from Rome to Bolsena. What pushed you in this direction? What attracts you to these places?
GS: I can say "to have escaped from Rome", and from that frenzy of driving dozens of kilometers a day in the traffic jam. I could no longer find the mental serenity and inspiration I needed. So after working on the Malagrotta landfill in Rome, I wanted to take something different, something that didn't belong to the real. While sifting through my hard disk I found many photos I took over the years on the lake and I immediately understood that this was the right direction. When you move into a small town, you have more opportunities to observe people, events. Somehow everything flows more slowly. In a big city, conversely, we often move through repetitive paths, and somehow we stop seeing as we hardly notice things. In Bolsena, I started again to look curiously into places, and their aura of mystery. I felt the attraction to ancient legends and scriptures. So my research on the lake started...
Book 'Malagrotta' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Urbanautica Institute, 2017
Book 'Malagrotta' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Urbanautica Institute, 2017
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
The 'Agarthi' series is the result of five years of exploration of Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Europe. Tell us about this process, this slow immersion...
GS: At first, I started investigating news about people who had disappeared in the lake. Such as the tragic event in 2007 that involved a German family on vacation. Three people perished. Two children and their father, whose body was never found. Many episodes of this kind have happened over the years, the last one this summer. Driven by curiosity to better understand these disappearances, I have started to study local legends through the internet and in the local library. I have also spent much time talking with the village elders. That's how I came across the Agarthi legend.
Agarthi, is a legendary kingdom located in the center of the Earth, described in the works of the writer Willis George Emerson (1856 - 1918). Emerson's concept was based on the theory of Terra Cava, a very popular topic in the field of esotericism and literature. For centuries theories about subterranean worlds and kingdoms have been told. The Christian hell that inspired the journey of Dante Alighieri is one of the many examples that could be cited.
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
I worked on the mystery that surrounds the lake and on the legends of the place, investigating the border between reality and fantasy. The work is based precisely on the territory of Etruria which could be a point of passage towards something undefined and mysterious. The Etruscans considered the island the spiritual heart of the entire Etruscan nation where their secrets were kept. According to the legends, one of the entrance to Agarthi is found on the Bisentina island located inside the Lake Bolsena.
So after moving to Bolsena, I began to reflect on how I could translate into images all that I was discovering about the mythological past of the region. And how this was linked to the most tragic episodes of the missing persons. This series, therefore, documents more than a place, my desire to tell a parallel and surreal world. A journey that prompted me to experiment with images and styles.
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
Although retaining its style and linguistic rigor, 'Agarthi' shows a greater complexity than your previous work on Malagrotta...
GS: Undoubtedly, I encountered more difficulties than working on Malagrotta because while in that project I had a well-defined area and a constant theme to follow, that of the criminal management of the waste dump. With this new series everything was inside my head so it was very easy to fall into banality or to produce things that had nothing to do with it. Photographically speaking, this has definitely represented a greater as much as stimulating challenge.
The last few months I was saturated, I needed to close and edit the work, I had more than 6,000 photographs. I remember that in the last few weeks of my work, when I went out to photograph, I practically didn't take any shoot. When I realized that I had no longer the need to shoot, to set the alarm at midnight and to go off on a boat with the fishermen, there I realized that my journey had come to an end.
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
What about the book then? We worked for a long time on the editing, did we?
GS: Sure. The first selection was made with my friends of the collective L.I.S.A.. This dialogue helped me better understand what other photographers saw in my images. A very useful exercise, especially when it comes to doing a book. Then we worked on it for about 6 months. I like the fact that we shaped this as a journey into Agarthi. It starts with some pictures of the lakeshore, and slowly we move through infernal circles, like a Dante descent into the underworld. Here different situations are encountered, which feed tensions and mysteries. The book concludes with images of fire, like crazy flames, like monstrous figures that populate nightmares.
Book 'Agarthi' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, 2019
Book 'Agarthi' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, 2019
Book 'Agarthi' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, 2019
Book 'Agarthi' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, 2019
Book 'Agarthi' by Gian Marco Sanna, published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, 2019
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
© Gian Marco Sanna from the series 'Agarthi'
I would say a whirlwind of signs, symbologies, rather oppressive atmospheres. There are no references to the present and this produces further bewilderment and loss. There seems to be no escape, and the gaze is often trapped in cramped or dark rooms and settings. A sort of purgatory, a suspended dimension with no way out. A journey through our deepest fears. In this anxiety, we understand the survival of mythology in the contemporary, or the need to put facts back into a oneiric perspective. Human beings need myths, heroes, legends, an afterlife in the earth, where to bury bodies, evil desires, and dramas.
GS: Indeed, the narrative needs merges with the awareness of telling of that ancient energy I perceive from the ground and from the lake. I've always felt a different energy in this place, like a force that pushes you down from above and makes you feel vulnerable. Maybe Simona Guerra is right when in the book she wonders if I really went down in that world and for fear of being thought crazy I took pictures as a testimony.
Perhaps, just like me, she felt some sensations, she has lived them, and she knows what it means to sink her feet in the black sand of the lake. In photography I really like to represent those emotions that connect me to places, to picture my mood.
© Gian Marco Sanna, installation view 'Agarthi' at Gibellina festival, Sicily, 2019
© Gian Marco Sanna, installation view 'Agarthi' at Gibellina festival, Sicily, 2019
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LINKS
Gian Marco Sanna
Book 'Malagrotta', Urbanautica Institute, 2017
Book 'Agarthi', Penisola Edizioni, 2019
Urbanautica Italy
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