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Postcards from some small villages

Small villages all end up resembling each other in my eyes, not so much in appearance – they can be ancient or modern, in Italy or outside – as in the lonely, melancholic atmosphere I feel hovering among their streets.

Cloths in the wind. Palestrina, province of Rome (Italy), July 2nd 2023.

In the last six months I have taken a few trips out of town and a holiday abroad, and in almost every place I have visited my eye, in different forms, has seen and photographed the same thing.

I have always lived in the City, and I wouldn’t change this biographical fact for anything in the world, in the sense that I have never been attracted to the rhetoric about the bucolic charm of small towns, I have always disliked Cincinnatus returning to his field, and I also say of my grandfather, whose peasant ancestry I proudly claim, that thank goodness he became urbanised towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Alley and empty chair. Cappadocia, province of L’Aquila (Italy), July 16th 2023.

So it is with a sceptical and citizen’s eye that I have looked at and photographed these small villages; without any sociological affectation or documentary pretence, I have tried to render only the sense of abandonment, of emptiness, the result of the progressive loss of the centrality of these places, the fruit of a centuries-old history which, here and elsewhere, has emptied them of activities and people.

The gattopardi of Collepardo. Collepardo, province of Frosinone (Italy), July 16th 2023.

Without any regrets or nostalgia, in the changes some things are lost and others are gained, if anything trying to good-naturedly mock the endless postcards about such pretty old villages!

Derelict houses. Tsangarada, province of Volos (Greece), August 16th 2023.
Alley and full chair. Argalasti, province of Volos (Greece), August 18th 2023.
Lace curtains look alike everywhere. Aghia Kiriaki, province of Volos (Greece), August 19th 2023.
The loneliness of the high street. Venticano, province of Avellino (Italy), August 29th 2023.
One cannot say that ‘there was no dog’. Montefusco, province of Avellino (Italy), September 1st 2023.
Mist from the belvedere. Venticano, province of Avellino (Italy), December 9th 2023.
Courtyard with drying rack. Montefusco, province of Avellino (Italy) December 9th 2023.
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Pietro Coppa

Nato e vissuto a Roma, fotografo per antica passione.

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