AEGNA
Aegna, a small island that from its shores has always observed the Estonian capital Tallinn. It hosted few settlements of fishermen in its golden days, a soviet base in the darkest ones, and nowadays abandoned constructions along with wild nature. Now the population is accounted to be of six people, who are not to be found despite any effort; mainland dwellers fleeing the city for a greener place are instead the only humans that can be spotted.
Exploring the island I’ve indeed found a summer centre for Buddhist meditation and a couple of monks in spiritual retire, but then only ran-down or even crumbling facilities of the soviet era, new built estates with the typical traits of the Scandinavian architecture, spiritual spots for offerings to unknown deities, as well as many other puzzling and inapprehensible things, like feathers scattered on a pathway for an instance. Not the actual inhabitants though, except the ones buried in the local cemetery, which counts dozens of tombstones on a musky field adorned by lichens. Here the people are at the best just an ephemeral phenomenon, solely consistence of the residuals of their past existence.
REDEEMED
Born with the purpose of celebrating the eradication of the pest that afflicted the city of Venice five hundred years ago, this secular ritual, which symbol is a votive bridge that links Venice with the island of the Giudecca, takes now a quite ironic meaning by being held during the COVID-19 pandemic. As ironic as significant I would add. Therefore, the following series portrays
the singularity of this traditional event flawed by the altered concept of mundanity, which has now spoiled the lives of us all. But more than that, also the resilience and the desire of a new start carried by the emblematic redemption seeking figures that walk this bridge.
