Seismic Archaeology

Started in 2017 with a panoramic 6x12 view camera, this final section is a survey of the ruins still visible today in the various centres of the Belìce.

The ruins take on the appearance of archaeological sites. Stones marked by time, now ageless, stand out against the blue sky. The poor stones of the Belìce refer by contrast to the majestic ruins of Selinunte, just a few kilometers away.

The photographer becomes an archaeologist. The rubble turned into memory tells the constructive and seismic history of the Belìce territory.

There are images that have become symbolic: the monumental staircase of Old Salaparuta with two charred palm trees at the top, like broken columns. The crooked, rusted blue road sign GIBELLINA in the middle of the weeds pointing to a town that no longer exists. A perfectly preserved cobblestone alley climbing straight up and disappearing into brambles, invaded by wild fennel. A tufa facade with three openings, the central one dry-walled with its own fallen stones. A round arch isolated among rubble resisting like a dolmen. A roofless church interior, with niches and stuccoes still readable under the sky. Houses halfway between collapse and reconstruction, where a new plastered house leans against a shattered wall.

As Leonardo Sciascia wrote in the introduction to the _Quaderno di Montevago_ (October 1968) finding pupils' essays under the rubble: _“In Sicily there is a small town called Montevago... ‘There is’: this is what moves us, now that the town no longer exists.”_

Today these towns exist as seismic archaeology. Photography fixes their dignity as ruin.