Position:
Pico, Frosinone, Italy
Date:
2024-2025
Pico is my father’s village in Ciociaria, a region in the countryside of Frosinone, central Italy. I’ve been going there to visit my family every summer for as long as I can remember, and over the years it’s become a place deeply tied to my sense of return.
But time has been hard on my family´s cultural identity, slowly taking with it beloved people, traditions, and long-held habits. New generations struggle to sustain such a demanding lifestyle and keep old traditions alive. Country life has become every day less compatible with nowadays life and necessities and what were once components of everyday life such as bread making, olive picking animal farming are now struggling to survive.
Diario Ciociaro is committed to documenting the customs, traditions and everyday rituals of a family life that is slowly disappearing over the years and dedicated to preserving and archive of it.
Diario Ciociaro is a love letter in form of visual record to my family´s future generations, who most likely are not going to witness the same life I was blessed to experience in Pico.
The rhythm of the days there hasn’t changed much over the years and looks like this: mornings start early, the sun hits hard by noon, and during the hottest hours everything slows down. Windows and shutters are closed, lights go off, and everyone rests in the dark, waiting for the heat to pass.
Later in the afternoon my uncle goes feed the animals “laddietro” (back there, where the farm is) and takes me with him to go pick some fresh figs and grapes. Laica, his dog, follows him like a shadow. The grass is sun-dried and if I could upload an audio-file you would hear the crickets buzzing non-stop. In this scenario my aunt usually comes to rescue with some coffee in small plastic cups. A blessing.
The light is golden, shadows are sharp, the air is warm, there is a sense of quietness.
By the time the sun starts setting we return home and meet my grandma on the balcony, facing the orchard and the olive trees. She usually sits on her plastic chair and tells me stories of back then, when the house was still to be built and the kids were still to be born. If my grandfather was still there he would ask me to sit next to him and hold my hand.
