Perhaps to truly understand Salento, one must begin with the unknowable: the megalithic sites, for example. An emotional and mysterious journey, an ancestral dialogue between the stones and the sky, the earth, the water and the wind.
A journey for two, in this proposal for Cinema del Reale: the vision of a photographer from the past in dialogue with that of a photographer of the present, Giuseppe Palumbo and Leonello Bertolucci.
Photography is a time machine, just as memory and history are. The magic of photography lies in its ability to freeze and capture a moment, snatching it away from the relentless flow of events and life. Starting from a single photograph, we humans thus discover a superpower: we are able to travel back and forth through time.
And when, today as in the past, two photographers choose megalithic stones – so prevalent in the Salento region – as their subject, the juxtaposition becomes dizzying. For what else are dolmens and menhirs, if not themselves witnesses to time?
The body of work by photographer Giuseppe Palumbo is an extraordinary collection comprising 1,740 plates, taken between 1907 and 1959, which depict the Salento of yesteryear. This precious archive, owned by the Castromediano Museum in Lecce, is showcased through exhibitions at the Castello Volante.
Leonello Bertolucci, a professional photographer who has been producing photo-essays for Italian and international publications for many years, offers us an artist’s journey through the mysterious and ancestral megalithic sites of the Salento region. This work of his has also taken the form of a photographic book entitled *Respiri di Pietra* (Lupo Editore).
To this day, however, with a few exceptions, the vast majority of Salento’s megaliths – a true treasure all too often forgotten – are still awaiting adequate protection and promotion.
Exhibition
18 July > 18 October 23
