Simone Donati
Book, Tearsheet
2021
Simone Donati
Book, Tearsheet
2021
Bova Superiore (RC), August 2016
Varco Appennino is an exploration of the inner areas of the Italian Southern Apennines, those hidden, remote, away from the clichés and chronicles that often characterize this part of the country. The work is a dialogue with the “Apennines dictionary” of the Irpinian poet and writer Franco Arminio, and it develops from the often repeated phrase addressed to Donati too many times by the inhabitants of the small villages I visited: “There is nothing here! Why do you come here? “
During his research, which began in 2016 and ended in March 2020, he traveled through the mountain ranges that from Calabria cross Basilicata, Campania and Molise, up to the border with Abruzzo. Simone worked on the complexity and contradictions contained in this sentence, in this often rich and fertile “nothing”, from a historical and present point of view. A nothingness made of landscapes and history, of gestures and intimacy, of inhabited countryside and slowness, of unfinished buildings as melancholic memories of failed dreams.
After many years dedicated to documenting the collective rites and the great sacred and profane manifestations of contemporary devotion for the book “Hotel Immagine”, Simone needed to return to the banality of everyday life, made of apparent simplicity and continuity with nature.
Witty Books published the book, curated by Fiorenza Pinna, in 2021.
Sant'Angelo Le Fratte (PZ), October 2018
Giuseppe, San Fele (PZ), November 2017
Pietracupa (CB), February 2018
Bova Superiore (RC), August 2016
Rocco and Michele, San Chirico Nuovo (PZ), October 2018
San Chirico Nuovo (PZ), October 2018
Aquilonia (AV), November 2018
Muro Lucano (PZ), November 2018
Lina, Andrea and Franca, Bova Superiore (RC), February 2016
Civita (CS), February 2017
Maria, Capracotta (IS), February 2018
Cusano Mutri (BN), April 2018
Civita (CS), February 2017
Don Sergio with 2 altar boys, Nocera Terinese (CZ), March 2016
Amendolea vecchia (RC), February 2016
Andrea, Guardiaregia (CB), March 2020
Pescopennataro (IS), April 2019
Pietrapertosa (PZ), April 2017
Pazzano (RC), January 2016
Valentina, Palomonte (SA), November 2018
Nocera Terinese (CZ), March 2016
Remo, Caulonia (RC), September 2016
Michela and Nicola, Campolieto (CB), March 2020
Foglianise (BN), April 2018
Varco Appennino
Witty books, 2021
108 pages, 23×28 cm
Softcover with one flap
750 copies
Italian and English
Texts by Franco Arminio
Design and edit by Fiorenza Pinna
Publications on Le Monde Magazine, L’Espresso and Jesus Magazine
