On Sunday 28 November, at 6.00 pm, at Corigliano d’Otranto Castle, there will be a presentation of the book *La mia Puglia*, published by Edizioni Minerva as part of the *I luoghi dei sentimenti* series. The event, introduced by Mayor Dina Manti, will feature Luca Bandirali, Lorenzo Capellini, Vincenzo D’Alba and Francesco Maggiore.
“We are overwhelmed by the pace at which we live our lives,” says Dina Manti, “and we don’t have time to look up and take in our surroundings. So often we are dazzled and surprised to discover the beauty and the great value of living in places like ours.” To pause and look at the limestone from which churches and doorways are carved; the courtyards of the traditional houses; the golden light that spreads across the Baroque squares, the colour of olive oil. These are the very roots that unite this land and its people, and which bind its history together.
Our path towards the future has been shaped by the centuries and traditions behind us; this is also why visitors discover an atmosphere not found elsewhere, because these places reveal the very essence of our land.
With the book *La mia Puglia* (*My Puglia*) in this age of instant gratification, Lorenzo Capellini freezes time in our memory. Through his images, we restore meaning to words, emotions, feelings, people – in short, to real life.
Spanning almost three hundred pages, the book recounts the beauties of Puglia through the writings of Gianfranco Dioguardi and Francesco Maggiore and Capellini’s photographs. “This region of ‘Puglia’,” writes Gianfranco Dioguardi in his essay, “is characterised by great contradictions, a land where bitterness and sweetness merge into a multitude of contrasting images that stand out for the magical variety of intense beauty, but also of ancient sufferings which the people of Puglia, near and far, have managed to overcome, making Puglia a blessed land celebrated by all.”
“Within its geographical and historical scope,” states Francesco Maggiore in the introduction, “lie the foundations of a morphological diversity and cultural richness that make Puglia unique: a region rooted in the time and space of that Sea, the cradle of three continents, which the ancient Romans called ‘nostrum’. Morphological contrasts and unity, linguistic divergences and convergences, architectural austerity and splendour represent just some of the distinctive features of this region, where everything seems to oscillate between the real and the imaginary. And so, poised between enchantment and realism, I embarked on this pilgrimage through my native region, drawn by the prospect of accompanying two exceptional travellers.”
Lorenzo Capellini is an internationally renowned artist and photographer; a creator of exceptional photographic narratives, a craftsman of powerful images, a tireless adventurer, a figure of great intellectual charm, always close to the events and key figures (from Ernest Hemingway to Pier Paolo Pasolini, from Alberto Moravia to Aldo Rossi) who have shaped the political, social, artistic and cultural history of the last sixty years, in Italy and around the world. In the book’s introduction, he writes: “Now, for this series of mine, I have embarked on another journey through the great region of Puglia, from a different perspective. I have been fortunate enough to travel through it, from the Gargano to Capo di Santa Maria di Leuca, in the company of one of the most distinguished intellectuals of this marvellous region, Gianfranco Dioguardi, who passionately guided me through his much-loved homeland”.