Terra Agra

copertina

Deserted places
“There was once a time when the mere mention of the word “Maremma” conjured up the raw image of a harsh and inhospitable landscape: it was the Maremma of Salvatore Rosa who, at Monterufoli in the summer of 1650, painted his solitary “Democritus Meditating”. A real and inaccessible land which called for devotion and silent perseverance, capable of producing a coarse range of feelings distilled into irrevocable passions: “… the difficult trials and the sweat / the hunts and the perilous windings …” Fierceness, simplicity.
Freedom which is sought even to opting for extra-legal solitude; consistency asserted to the point of cruelty.
The place whose very name is derived from every savage honesty and rustic moral rectitude, untouched by urban corruption, twisted politics and the trafficking in such things as feelings and ideas. It was the Maremma of Pia di Sestini, the Maremma in which “desolate scrub” spreads out everywhere – letters etched on a chart – undid me, the fatal word which resounds gloomily in Tiburzi’s epic poetry, bitter in its sweetest love song: “… my heart always trembles when you go there / because I am afraid that you will never return.” In the torment induced by its purity, Carducci called it “sweet”:

“Well do I recognize in you the accustomed shapes
with doubtful eyes between laughter and tears,
and in them I follow the wandering footsteps
ofmy dreams behind your youthful enchantment.
Oh, all that I loved, all that I dreamed was in vain;
and I always ran, and never reached the end;
and tomorrow I shall fall …”

Regret. And yet on the other hand” in the Maremma facing the sea” – writes Giovanni Fattori – “I found comfort and silence and I did much work and this is why my paintings reflect the melancholy of the Maremma.” And then even this clear, chaste melancholy was impossible. The Maremma, “sweet land” far from which the “scornful song” is no longer refined in bitterness but rather turns sour. The cleanliness, the righteousness, the temperament of Luciano Bianciardi, precious legacy of such fortune, in their present-day’ frenzy and slovenliness, ask to be taken apart, wrapped up in a “fold of black velvet”, in sleep, to exist no more.
Where do we find the Maremma today?
“There was once a time when reality was clearly distinct from fiction, where one could scare people by telling stories, but always knowing that they were make-believe, where one could go to special and welldefined places (amusement parks, fairs, the theater, the movies) where art imitated life. In our times, indifferently, we are doing the opposite: life imitates art. The smallest monument of the smallest village is lit up to look like a stage set.” I am quoting from a page in Marc Auge’s “The Impossible Voyage: Tourism and Its Images” translated by Bollati Boringhieri with the title Disneyland and other nonplaces where can still be read: “This tendency to spectacularize, this movement towards total fantasy which makes us forget the boundaries between reality and fantasy, is spreading throughout the entire world. Various factors are at work here. Tourism obviously. Even more the ever-growing role played by pictures.”

The Maremma today is a tourist picture. A leap into the universe of fiction. And how is this achieved, to not move away from Auge’s imagery, this copying of fantasy into the real Maremma of today? How can one make this real earth, its landscapes, its forests and its sea, disappear into a stage set? The first most obvious and significant means of achieving this is photography. Through a cosmetic process which requires a stereotyped selection of shots, filters, tricks-of-the trade, choice of angles according to the given nature of a particular scene and recourse to the most banal repertory of photographic illustration. A demanding process, without scruples, one of tremendous accentuating and emphasizing to subsequently reduce this enormous reality into the one-dimensional prefabricated repertory of pictures.

Here is where we find the Maremma. A vagueness rendered with the appropriate seal of approval: sunsets over the sea, moonlit nights, rarefied clouds in azure skies, green plains which dramatically impart their feeling of nature. Et cetera. The Maremma: a certain amount of stock-taking according to the desired effects: from Natura Incontaminata (Uncontaminated Nature) to Pineta suI Mare (Pines On the Sea), from Caccia nel Bosco (Hunting in the Woods) to Puledro Brado (Wild Colt). I quote from the Guide to Farm Holidays and Country Vacations, Italian Touring Club, Milan 2000: the built-up area is a most interesting medieval village, on the crest of a hill covered with olive trees, surrounded by a wall … an ancient hamlet in stone located on the top of a hill which looks out over the entire countryside from the Maremma to Mount Amiata … the enjoyment of hospitality and the lively feeling oftradition do the rest … one’s eyes look out over the plains, registering emotion from Castiglione della Pescaia to Punta Ala, among the Etruscan antiquities of Vetulonia …” Ready-to-wear rags, service included.

Carlo Carletti’s photographs are an attempt to erase the image of the Maremma. To stay far away from tourist convention. Avoiding sites by trying to find a place. The places are as deserted as the sites are crowded; the walk is as slow as the ride is fast.
This is the premise whichjusitifies the current collection of photographs. Thus, in having chosen the Maremma, there is an intention which exceeds the result of a single photo reproduced here and considers the awareness of the photographer, the feeling that he is coming to add a new dimension to his profession and what the critical awarenesses are which must inspire him. To reveal the insignificance of the photographic stereotype.
I recall a publication, released in 1998 by Editore Betti, “The Enclosed Light” which Carlo Carletti had dedicated to the forgotten silences and half-lights of doorways, to the entranceways and inner stairwells of a city, Siena, which, like the Maremma, is more and more a clone of simple illustration far off the beaten tourist path. In the same fashion, behind all the tinsel and off the beaten path, in this bitter land, with similar sobriety, without relying on widespread special effects, with an honesty of the eye developed according to the rules of a typical American photographer of the 30’s, he selects the subject to be photographed not based upon a haphazard feeling of the moment, but rather according to logical reasoning and sound judgement, Carletti’s photography relies for its effectiveness on a slow time for perusal, an adequate recognition which is the opposite of instantaneous. Observe some of the photos which dominate the collection and make up its intimate coherence. Nature during the winter relative to the “summertime” convention of vacation. In place of the usual stylistics with which landscapes are depicted in photography, a composition which can be devoid of feeling, prosaic and without definition, here is photography without ornamental indulgence, making use of an austere style of picture-taking which, with passionate intelligence, restores to their integrity those places devoid of exposure. There is hardly a figure or a face which does not reflect in the personal appearances of the current inhabitants some of the characteristics of this harsh land. Quite the contrary: a strong emphasis on solitude: houses almost abandoned, clothing hung out to dry and then forgotten, poor yet well-preserved household items. Plaster, stones, furrows, shingles, sands. And twigs, naked branches, reeds, bones. Foreverything a harbinger of cold winds.”
Alberto Olivetti

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