© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

My understanding of the project and book 'Alte Vie'(High Paths) started with learning how mountain trekking is vital for Stefano Canetta—walking through the valleys and mountains where he grew up. His home garden, as he defines it. Here his family, tales, grandparents, and rooted. Precisely during these frequent trails, he is fascinated by the paintings he finds on the votive chapels along the old paths, the so-called "mule tracks" that connected the small mountain villages between them and led to the main streets towards the markets. We are talking about an era in which a subsistence economy prevailed, based on the products that the forest, pastures, and a little agriculture allowed at certain altitudes. We are in the Valle Intrasca and Val d'Ossola, where a handful of villages flank the San Giovanni stream that plunges into Lake Maggiore.

The book 'Alte Vie' by Stefano Canetta. Self-published 2020

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

We observe rudimentary, anonymous drawings, made to adorn small altars, votive chapels, religious shrines, all meant to ingratiate with a good harvest, a birth, or healing. All of this indeed refers to ancient pagan rituals converted to Christianity. Therefore, they are mostly images of a religious background, painted between the mid-eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among these images, Stefano Canetta found a trinity of Christ, a representation forbidden by the Pope already at the end of the eighteenth century. However, these images are mostly being forgotten, destined to perish in a short time. At a closer look, they speak of an abandonment of the mountain, of a flight downstream towards the flourishing post-war industry, of the villages' depopulation, of the few dozen inhabitants who remain, of the empty primary schools.

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

The book 'Alte Vie' by Stefano Canetta. Self-published 2020

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

Stefano Canetta's will is also to document these traces of community and rural life destined to disappear. Together with them, he combines images of mountains, stony ground, rocks, those materials that make up the plaster, and these paintings' souls. Therefore, the photos disintegrate like the mountains eroded by the weather. Somehow, the author of these photographs feels that the human being's need to think and produce images goes hand in hand with the need to have a spiritual to transcend the hard everyday life. He also invites us to reflect that at the time, these paintings were perhaps the few and only images that people saw, and even fewer were those capable of producing them. A pity then that these ancient images, evidence of memory, are lost. 'Alte Vie' is a project that speaks of the inexorable passage of time that consumes everything, both the paintings and the rocks. It also speaks of the need to safeguard the ancient forms of expression of transcendence in an unbridled self-referential era that leaves much behind with easy indifference.

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

© Stefano Canetta from the series 'Alte Vie' 

The book 'Alte Vie' by Stefano Canetta. Self-published 2020

After decades of its invention, the photographic device's potential retains this possibility of freezing time before and after the click. A means that nourishes history and helps not to forget. An invisible opportunity is often underestimated.

The book 'Alte Vie' by Stefano Canetta. Self-published 2020

The book 'Alte Vie' by Stefano Canetta. Self-published 2020

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LINKS
Book 'Alte Vie', Self-published 2020