Photographer Michele Battilomo is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘ De-Population’. To see Michele’s body of work, click on any image.
La Lucania, an authentic region with a thousand facets, but that conceals a strong unease due to depopulation.
An apparently unstoppable process that began decades ago, which struck the heart of the Lucan hinterland, villages where a few hundred live, sometimes a few dozen people, often mostly elderly; the dynamics is always the same, everywhere: more inhabitants die than are born, and the few young people flee to the cities or to the coast, where it is easier to find a job and think about a future.
The shots are characterized by the centrality of the human figure, by its expressions, in which time has stopped, and to demonstrate it are the deep and lived eyes, framed in faces in which the wrinkles are carved on the skin. The entire series was taken in the galaxy of small towns in Basilicata, with a totally street approach, seizing the “unique” moment, without any preparation.
“In this dark land, without sin and without redemption, where evil is not moral, but earthly pain, which is forever in things, Christ did not descend. Christ stopped at Eboli. ” – Carlo Levi
All images © Michele Battilomo
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By Michele Battilomo
