BAUXITE (human futility) In the easternmost corner of the italian paeninsula, where each morning dawn appears first , an apparently pristine place bears witness to the magnificence of nature. As a matter of fact, there’s little in the way of preservation, since this pond originated on a man-made crater: welcome to Otranto, right next to the lighthouse of Punta Palascia is a dismissed bauxite quarry: a place of magic, so scenic, among the most significant naturalistic landmarks in Puglia. Bauxite is a sedimentary clayey rock that is the chief commercial ore of aluminum. It consists largely of hydrated alumina with variable proportions of iron oxides. Bauxite was first found in the area in the 1940s and was mined for 35 years, rapidly becoming a paramount business for the locals. Then in 1976 the earth digging machines went silent and the men that operated them for 36 years abandoned the place, leaving deep man-made marks that have had a violent impact on the morphology of landscape and the ecosystem. All is left now is an enormous, empty pit. But nature has its course, from abandonment stems a “tiers paysage”; lack of interest from man means a new life. Salento is a karst land and underground waterstreams found their way through the red clay to create a small emerald pond, the center of a rich and flourishing new ecosystem. Red earth and green water draw a landscape shrouded in a mystic atmosphere, which i tried to capture with the least possible manipulation, therefore my choice of the pinhole as I deemed it the best way to render emotions as they were. When we express worry for our planet’s future, we ought more earnestly to say we are worried for the future of our species. Our planet has survived to many catastrophic events already, maybe we humans will disappear one day and our impact on Earth will just be another catastrophe that the planet will have survived to. This place is a proof of the force of nature, and of the apparent futility of our presence on earth.