Topografia meridiana
by Francesco Conti
portfolio shortlisted call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2022', 2022
Category: Anthropology and Territories
Topografia meridiana is a medium and large format film photographic project, started in 2009 and still ongoing. In the wake of the Franco Cassano’s essay Il Pensiero meridiano, the work investigates, in documentary style, a lesser or marginal Apulia (a region of Southern Italy), which captures the landscape ignored by the official and commercial communication associated with the explosion of mass summer tourism. Photographs are taken along service and slip roads; places where the symbols of the ancient rural world increasingly collide with the infrastructures of new development, linked to the seasonal and intense exploitation of the territory, made of resorts and postcards with crystal clear waters. Topografia Meridiana is a bittersweet reflection and a forecast on the future of a territory that too quickly turned to mass tourism, with the insidious economic opportunities that a seasonal business entails, losing sight of the risks how such a rapid and uncontrolled expansion can impact on the local environment and culture.