Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Until October 18th, 34 photographs displayed on the external and internal gates of the Montanelli Gardens, testimony and warning about the actions carried out to the detriment of the Planet

Milan, September 21 2021 – Until October 18th, images of a felled forest and the words of its trees just before falling will remain posted on the external and internal gates of the Montanelli Gardens. An outdoor photographic exhibition, a musical space for young people, a reflective meeting with authors and experts to focus our gaze and think on the environmental disaster that hit North East Italy in the autumn of 2018, when in a few hours a terrible storm of wind and water overturned the forests, throwing millions of trees to the ground.

The exhibition is promoted and produced by the Natural History Museum of Milan, the Municipality of Milan, Ricordi Music School, TMC and STILL FOTOGRAFIA, with the patronage of the Cariplo Foundation. The initiative is part of the national event #All4Climate Italy 2021, preparatory to the 26th Conference of the Parties in Glasgow (COP26) and was designed outdoors precisely to facilitate the experience of involvement in environmental disasters and reflection on the responsibilities of 'Man towards the Planet, asking for a momentary and precious distraction from daily activity in urban space.

The photographs on display were taken by Manuel Cicchetti and, through the stitching technique, it was possible to create images that combine up to 27 shots, allowing photographs measuring over 4 by 2 meters to be printed, maintaining the accuracy and sharpness of the details that the observer able to appreciate the most hidden corners of the woods and nature.

Both testimony and warning on the actions carried out to the detriment of the planet, the Milan exhibition is the foundation of a path which has the ambition of combating climate change and which also envisages a broad involvement of civil society: the Vaia project in fact - which expresses also through the photographic book of the same name, enriched by texts by Angelo Miotto - was born with the intention of accompanying the observer in an emotionally equal relationship with nature devastated by the cyclone. The photographer has chosen to get as close as possible to a 1:1 relationship between Nature and the observer, thus imposing a more immediate connection with events today increasingly filtered by smartphone or computer screens. Vaia leaves a dark and desolate landscape that almost makes one think of scenes from a war that had brought so much destruction to those very places. Man is now called to consider his share of responsibility.

The images portray the now fallen trees; but what cry could they have uttered, a moment before the end? If the photographic testimony already gives voice to those plants, the work goes further and the journalist Angelo Miotto is entrusted with the task of imagining the final thoughts of RadiceTorta, Fioretto, FustoDritto, Corteccia, TanaFelice and many others to whom he wants to confer the honor of a proper name, bringing their last message to the reader, as in a Spoon River of our woods.

"My name is Fioretto, because the last meters of my top are thin and sway in the wind as if I were a fencer fighting against the wind. When the blowing subsides I rest, ready for the next challenge. Those light slashes are now not anymore, my blade has been broken and no one will be able to forge it again. It wasn't the same wind that played with me that day, but an angry whirlwind, I thought, as I suddenly gave way."

INFORMATION
www.museodistorianaturalemilano.it
www.stillfotografia.it

Images al link