PART 5 - ASSIGNMENT 5 - FOCUSED PAGE
Focused page on the history of the
Val Lapisina disaster
Val Lapisina disaster
I thought of creating this page as support material for Assignment 5.
I gathered the result of all the preliminary work.
Once I made the choice on the theme to be developed and, as suggested by my Tutor, I did a Google search and retrieved historical documentation regarding the subject matter of Assignment 5.
I then collected some photographic inspiration from some authors such as Joel Stermfeld, Walker Evans, Stephen Shore.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Texts collected online and translated with Google Translator.
The construction of the A27 motorway and the
Val Lapisina disaster
A motorway is forever, 29/08/2011 by Enrico Zanette (https://storiamestre.it/2011/08/autostradapersempre/ accessed on 27/7/2019)
...................
"a few weeks ago, I read the book by Matteo Melchiorre of which you have published some passages. At one point, Melchiorre also speaks of Fadalto, a locality in the Val Lapisina, the last offshoot north of the municipality of Vittorio Veneto bordering the province of Belluno. The passage is found on page 184: “to go from Belluno to the plain, we passed through the Fadalto, descending an easy step between villages and towns. Villages and towns lived worthy of the traffic that went down or up. Bars, shops, artisans, schools and so on. Then [...] they built the A27 highway, that disaster. They raised the road from the pass, and raised it atop a viaduct, [...] hundreds of meters high. The cars now pass through the air and the Fadalto countries, slowly, deprived of passing traffic, have died. Who has remained to live on the Fadalto [...] is found even now, the garbage in the courtyards and on the roofs; cans, cigarettes, bottles and bags, thrown on the countries from the sky, from the point where the sky is crossed by the highway ".
Reading the valley and the highway in Melchiorre's book was a nice surprise and this reading has awakened my attention, for years dormant from the daily habit of the gaze, towards the Val Lapisina and its viaduct. So, taking advantage of a few days off I went to see what the Fadalto is like today going up the old Alemagna road that runs under the motorway viaducts. For those who want to, thanks to Google Maps you can now also travel from home.
1. As Melchiorre writes, villages and towns have died and the entire valley appears to be ghostly, cut by the raised viaduct.
Almost everything is for sale, between vacant houses and ruins, the constant are the desperate signs of Vendesi. A symbol of the abandonment of the valley is the Belvedere Hotel, with half-closed shutters, the white cubital sign in the still lively yellow background.
On the road that leads to the terrace there is a squeak of iron flags that were to welcome foreign tourists.
.......
Peeking inside the lobby you can still see the cash register on the galvanized counter, a pair of fake leather armchairs, a low table and a giant television; on the wall the calendar of the proloco of January 1997. Who knows if it is precisely from that winter of '97 that it ceased its activity, but it does not matter, after the opening of the motorway, on November 30th 1994, it was only a matter of time. Once the pylons of the raised viaduct had been erected, the Belvedere would no longer have reason to exist. His name in fact appears today as the mocking note of black humor.
..........
2. Albergo Belvedere was not the only one in the valley to have taken its name from the ancient panorama; some hairpin bends to the north was the Miravalle restaurant, with the adjacent hotel and restaurant by Mosé which, to attract the Germans, had equipped itself with the classic "Zimmer" light sign. After the opening of the motorway, the owner had told the journalist Fulvio Fioretti that he was interviewing him for the "Gazzettino" of 29 June 1995: "We have to take what comes - he says - and focus on quality and service, as we have always done to force customers to return. There is no other solution. The Fadalto, for us who have made it known to the world cannot be forgotten just for the passage of a motorway ". The entire building, marked by neglect, is on sale today.
.........
4. Even in the eighties when the highway project was far away, but the signs of the crisis of the traditional activities already visible for some time Monsignor Basilio Sartori in his text dedicated to the Val Lapisina (La Valle Lapisina between history and legend, Vittorio Veneto, TIPSE, 1982, p. 226) had tried to revive the valley by focusing on tourism: "The Valle Lapisina also presents multiple and obvious signs of tourist interest. The reasons are linked to the natural transit route between the plain and the Cadore valley, of many quiet places (Maren, Fais, etc.) and favored by a cool and windy climate, with some important reasons of artistic interest (Church of S Giustina, Torre di S. Floriano, etc.) and the enchanting lakes (Negrisiola, Restello, Morto). If the tourist vocation is potentially out of the question, in reality the phenomenon in these years has had its centralized development in the areas of Fadalto where there is a number of seasonal presences exceeding 30 thousand units ".
The tourist appeal of Sartori, combined with the protests of the now few inhabitants of the valley, failed to block the inexorable construction of the viaduct.
.........
While beliefs and tourist locations change over time, a highway is forever."
_________________________________________________________________________________
This is one of the books that inspired the theme of my Assignment 5.
For almost 20 years Joel Sternfeld has been photographing the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway that runs along the West Side of Manhattan.
This route, which had been used by the railway until the 1960s, was abandoned following a decline in rail traffic and was left to its fate.
Photographs from the eighties document a landscape abandoned to itself and to the slow progress of nature that, even in the middle of a metropolis, manages to find its way.
Sternfeld created a set of images that represent this abandonment by man and the change of identity of this artifact, which was handed over to time and nature, until 2006, when recovery began.
Today this is one of the most suggestive walks in New York City, and even the houses that overlook this street have flourished again, benefiting from this recovery.
Sternfeld's photos struck me, because they not only document the abandonment of the past, but, through the grace of aesthetics and color, they almost hope for and give hope for a future evolution through human intervention. The same intervention that first determined man's absence through abandonment, as I hope to have expressed completely in my Assignment.
At the moment the fate of the Val Lapisina and of the road that leads to Fadalto does not seem as fortunate as that of the High Line in New York City.
_________________________________________________________________________________
In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art in New York set up its first exhibition dedicated to a single photographer, Walker Evans, with "American Photographs".
Evans, with this work, gives life to a new documentary style of the sad story of the victims of the economic depression of the Roosevelt administration years.
Evans' photos mainly focus on the presence of human subjects, therefore on the identity determined by human presence, while I concentrated on the identity determined by human absence.
Nevertheless I chose this work as a reference and starting point for my Assignment because the theme of social unease and crisis is akin to the work I have conducted.
The use of black and white, the realism, the interest in accurately illustrating the details of the image, are the same criteria that inspired me to make my photos.
However Walker Evans, as well as Russel Lee, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein (all participants in the program of the Farm Security Administration, which carried out assistance programs for the victims of the depression of those years), had a far more extensive mission than to raise awareness of the viewer on the dilapidation of homes and urban contexts.
He wanted to express explicitly and directly the hardship, poverty, crisis, the state of necessity of a social class.
This goal would not have been possible to achieve without the presence of human subjects.
I have carefully examined the beautiful photos of Walker Evans, and I have chosen some, which, among others, have no human subjects.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Stephen Shore with "Uncommon Places" was among the first to create the so-called "social landscape".
With the help of a large-format machine he created real monuments from diners, supermarket parking lots, intersections of suburban streets, in a sort of celebration of landscapes that, to the occasional traveler/viewer, might seem empty and depressing.
When I had the chance to get to know this work, I immediately bought it because I am particularly fascinated by urban landscapes.
First of all the title, "Uncommon Places", immediately pushes to reflection if the content is common (cliché) or if instead you confirm the velleity of the title, which recalls the famous cinematographic phrase "...... I have seen things that you humans ... ".
Yet the urban landscape was common to many (American) cities of the period. Speculation is born if the author refers to the fact that he has made "uncommon" something that is decidedly "common", through the masterful use of composition and, perhaps strategic, the absence of people in the scene.
At this point, a research on the author Stephen Shore was needed.
Shore was born in 1947. During his adolescence he met the director of MoMa Steichen, before joining Warhol's Factory.
.......
Peeking inside the lobby you can still see the cash register on the galvanized counter, a pair of fake leather armchairs, a low table and a giant television; on the wall the calendar of the proloco of January 1997. Who knows if it is precisely from that winter of '97 that it ceased its activity, but it does not matter, after the opening of the motorway, on November 30th 1994, it was only a matter of time. Once the pylons of the raised viaduct had been erected, the Belvedere would no longer have reason to exist. His name in fact appears today as the mocking note of black humor.
..........
2. Albergo Belvedere was not the only one in the valley to have taken its name from the ancient panorama; some hairpin bends to the north was the Miravalle restaurant, with the adjacent hotel and restaurant by Mosé which, to attract the Germans, had equipped itself with the classic "Zimmer" light sign. After the opening of the motorway, the owner had told the journalist Fulvio Fioretti that he was interviewing him for the "Gazzettino" of 29 June 1995: "We have to take what comes - he says - and focus on quality and service, as we have always done to force customers to return. There is no other solution. The Fadalto, for us who have made it known to the world cannot be forgotten just for the passage of a motorway ". The entire building, marked by neglect, is on sale today.
.........
4. Even in the eighties when the highway project was far away, but the signs of the crisis of the traditional activities already visible for some time Monsignor Basilio Sartori in his text dedicated to the Val Lapisina (La Valle Lapisina between history and legend, Vittorio Veneto, TIPSE, 1982, p. 226) had tried to revive the valley by focusing on tourism: "The Valle Lapisina also presents multiple and obvious signs of tourist interest. The reasons are linked to the natural transit route between the plain and the Cadore valley, of many quiet places (Maren, Fais, etc.) and favored by a cool and windy climate, with some important reasons of artistic interest (Church of S Giustina, Torre di S. Floriano, etc.) and the enchanting lakes (Negrisiola, Restello, Morto). If the tourist vocation is potentially out of the question, in reality the phenomenon in these years has had its centralized development in the areas of Fadalto where there is a number of seasonal presences exceeding 30 thousand units ".
The tourist appeal of Sartori, combined with the protests of the now few inhabitants of the valley, failed to block the inexorable construction of the viaduct.
.........
While beliefs and tourist locations change over time, a highway is forever."
_________________________________________________________________________________
"Walking The High Line"
by Joel Sternfeld
(2012, Third Edition, Steidl Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany).
This is one of the books that inspired the theme of my Assignment 5.
For almost 20 years Joel Sternfeld has been photographing the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway that runs along the West Side of Manhattan.
This route, which had been used by the railway until the 1960s, was abandoned following a decline in rail traffic and was left to its fate.
Photographs from the eighties document a landscape abandoned to itself and to the slow progress of nature that, even in the middle of a metropolis, manages to find its way.
Sternfeld created a set of images that represent this abandonment by man and the change of identity of this artifact, which was handed over to time and nature, until 2006, when recovery began.
Today this is one of the most suggestive walks in New York City, and even the houses that overlook this street have flourished again, benefiting from this recovery.
Sternfeld's photos struck me, because they not only document the abandonment of the past, but, through the grace of aesthetics and color, they almost hope for and give hope for a future evolution through human intervention. The same intervention that first determined man's absence through abandonment, as I hope to have expressed completely in my Assignment.
At the moment the fate of the Val Lapisina and of the road that leads to Fadalto does not seem as fortunate as that of the High Line in New York City.
_________________________________________________________________________________
"American Photograps"
by Walker Evans
(2012, Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019-5497).
In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art in New York set up its first exhibition dedicated to a single photographer, Walker Evans, with "American Photographs".
Evans, with this work, gives life to a new documentary style of the sad story of the victims of the economic depression of the Roosevelt administration years.
Evans' photos mainly focus on the presence of human subjects, therefore on the identity determined by human presence, while I concentrated on the identity determined by human absence.
Nevertheless I chose this work as a reference and starting point for my Assignment because the theme of social unease and crisis is akin to the work I have conducted.
The use of black and white, the realism, the interest in accurately illustrating the details of the image, are the same criteria that inspired me to make my photos.
However Walker Evans, as well as Russel Lee, Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein (all participants in the program of the Farm Security Administration, which carried out assistance programs for the victims of the depression of those years), had a far more extensive mission than to raise awareness of the viewer on the dilapidation of homes and urban contexts.
He wanted to express explicitly and directly the hardship, poverty, crisis, the state of necessity of a social class.
This goal would not have been possible to achieve without the presence of human subjects.
I have carefully examined the beautiful photos of Walker Evans, and I have chosen some, which, among others, have no human subjects.
_________________________________________________________________________________
"Uncommon Places"
by Stephen Shore
(2012, Third Edition, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-54445-7, USA).
(2012, Third Edition, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-54445-7, USA).
Stephen Shore with "Uncommon Places" was among the first to create the so-called "social landscape".
With the help of a large-format machine he created real monuments from diners, supermarket parking lots, intersections of suburban streets, in a sort of celebration of landscapes that, to the occasional traveler/viewer, might seem empty and depressing.
When I had the chance to get to know this work, I immediately bought it because I am particularly fascinated by urban landscapes.
First of all the title, "Uncommon Places", immediately pushes to reflection if the content is common (cliché) or if instead you confirm the velleity of the title, which recalls the famous cinematographic phrase "...... I have seen things that you humans ... ".
Yet the urban landscape was common to many (American) cities of the period. Speculation is born if the author refers to the fact that he has made "uncommon" something that is decidedly "common", through the masterful use of composition and, perhaps strategic, the absence of people in the scene.
At this point, a research on the author Stephen Shore was needed.
Shore was born in 1947. During his adolescence he met the director of MoMa Steichen, before joining Warhol's Factory.
Later Shore travelled across the USA, which leaded him to make iconic and disenchanted portraits of the American landscape.
This experience will help him to enhance the use of color in photography, making him one of the pioneers in this discipline.
Furthermore, he looks for a photograph of the landscape that is no longer intended as a technical representation or exaltation of the medium, such as, for example Ansel Adams, but the content research and presentation of an urban reality in constant change.
I was fascinated by Shore's book because his body of work is definitely out of the canons of his period and, in my opinion, very current.
Shore is a photographer who does not provide the viewer with anything appealing, preferring to offer the opportunity to contemplate particular situations.
All this leads to think that Shore approached a cultural current in vogue in the 60s, particularly in France, Situationism.
Situationists set themselves the goal of creating situations, defined as "..... moments of life concretely and deliberately constructed through the collective organization of a unitary environment and a game of events .....". (Guy Debord, Théorie de la dérive)
Often in their research they implemented what is called "drift": "To make a drift, go around on foot without a destination or a time. Choose the route not based on what you know, but on what you see around. to be estranged and to look at everything as if it were the first time. One way to facilitate it is to walk with a cadenced step and a slightly tilted upward look, so as to bring the architecture to the center of the visual field and leave the road surface at the margin lower than sight. You must perceive space as a whole and let yourself be attracted by details. " (Guy Debord, Théorie de la dérive).
Shore traveled, remaining amazed by such normal places that, rediscovered, could only become "Uncommon Places".
I am confident that I have followed a "drifting" approach in the realization of my Assignment 5, choosing the path not based on what I knew, but based on what I saw around.
In this approach I find affinities with Situationism and Stephen Shore, and I hope I succeeded.
