This is an unpublished project premiered today on C41 Magazine.
Eric Scaggiante, aka eric.persona, is 21 and he’s born and raised in Venice. His short life has been characterized by few simple passions: ride bicycles, fall in love, bake tiramisù, have fun, and observe reality. Since he was a child was easier to see him on a bicycle than standing on his legs. This passion is crucial, lead him to know almost every person he knows today, and gave him his first real job for a bicycle company based in Bergamo, where he moved immediately after high school. Then, with the first salary, in November 2019 Eric bought his first and current camera; from that moment as well as looking at the reality as it is, he started to shoot it looking for its beauty and craziness.
Sofia Blu Cremaschi is 24 years old and was born and raised in Milan. Sofia is a freelance photographer. She attended the Liceo Classico Manzoni and afterwards took a break from her studies for two years, during which time she travelled a lot. She has recently finished a course in documentary videomaking at Bauer. She has always had a very strong urge to document the stories of the people she has met, hence her passion for photography. Since she was 14 years old she has been shooting with an analogue camera and trying to tell the story of what surrounds her. She has never taken any photography courses, she is mainly self-taught; she found a lot of inspiration in the shots of Letizia Battaglia and Donna Ferrato. She is currently starting to work as an assistant photographer and developing her own projects.
About 1515 – words by Eric Scaggiante and Sofia Blu Cremaschi:
1515 The environmental emergency number that any citizen can dial in order to report a fire outbreak or any other situation of danger for the environment, in the island’s territory is by the Forestry Corps of Sicily Region.
This summer several fires have hit Sicily causing enormous problems to the territory and to the people living there. Fires and landslides caused by floods are closely connected.
We undertook a journey to the affected places in order to show what ‘remains in the months following; making a photographic report to tell the recovery of the territory and the people who live there; meeting, farmers, peasants, members of committees that protect the environment, councillors, and all those involved in the front line.
Like any such journey, there is a beginning but no end. This is a beginning for us.
What is the role of climate change in all this?
Climate change, plays a key role in these events, it is not necessarily the trigger but considered flora and earth itself the fuel, the climate becomes the comburent. Increasingly higher temperatures (remember the record of +48. 8 degrees centigrade reached in Sicily in August), winds of sirocco gradually more lashing, make the fires premeditatedly set, sometimes incontestable, for power and sometimes for lack of the right means and manpower, is an example of the immense fire that involved Gangi this summer, of which Aldo, councilor for tourism, told us the development; occurred during the annual Festa della Spiga, that day the sirocco winds were over 80 km / h and temperatures above 40 degrees, the arson nature – as noted later -, became in a few hours uncontestable, propagating at a speed of about 3 km / h, burning entirely within 10 hours the entire valley from Gangi up to San Mauro, it is an area of about 100 square kilometers (on a municipal area of 127 square kilometers) about 10000 hectares, teeming with farms and inhabitants; needless to say that the environmental and economic damages have been devastating, in a territory that in 60 years had not seen fires of a magnitude even close to this.
Once summer is over, and autumn has begun, the fear does not end, the extreme climates continue; if before it was the fire now it is the water of the first autumn rains – just think that between the end of October and November 2021 the rainfall totaled about 60% of the annual precipitation; that touching clayey soils and burnt by summer fires, does not find absorption, generating exceptional flooding phenomena, for which the territory is not prepared and thus leading to huge consequences, such as floods and landslides. The erosion that follows is just as important and contributes to weakening an already precarious terrain. Carlotta, from the Porto di Terra Committee, guided us through the forests of the Madonie Mountains, which have become so charred and eroded that small “crevasses” more than 2 meters deep have been created; or by Anna di Porto Palo in Menfi, who had a mountain collapse in front of her house.
Environmental disasters, climate change, and the work of human beings are closely linked together; in this historical moment it is necessary to take on strong responsibilities to achieve a reversal of the trend. Human action on the planet can be both negative and positive, it is a responsibility of companies, of large and small production but especially of all individuals; if each of us changes, the whole world changes.
Credits
Photography by Eric Scaggiante and Sofia Blu Cremaschi
Graphics by Yuri Kaban