The pandemic revealed the urgent need to step into a new paradigm—one built on fresh alliances that transcend the dichotomy between production and health.
“Stop production to safeguard health!” With the Covid-19 pandemic, the political perspective that had fueled the struggle of movements in Taranto over the past decade suddenly became a global demand.
Workers and citizens across the world mobilized—and continue to mobilize—calling for measures that protect the health of workers, society, and the environment alike.
Isola Madre, Largo Maria D’Enghien, Watching the Smoke from the Former Ilva in the Background, Taranto 2021
Taranto stands as one of the rare and defining examples of the fractures caused by the irreconcilable tension between industry and environment, between labor and health. It is a territory deeply marked by the traumas of the land, labor, health crises, and migration, which continue to shape its history and collective perception. These factors create an inertia that is difficult to overcome, making it challenging to introduce new and transformative elements.
The city of Taranto now finds itself on the threshold between a past that can no longer endure and a future that must be shaped in the very act of its emergence.
Isola Madre, Young People in the Foreground, Ilva and the Tamburi District in the Background, Taranto 2021
What has become of the city in the wake of the collapse of state-run industry? What urban and human transformations are now necessary to move beyond the dualism between production and health, between obedience and integration? How is the Apulian capital evolving, and toward what kinds of economies and models of coexistence?
What role can culture play in building a society united around something other than work? How should we reinterpret and govern contemporary territories? What tools are most suitable for this task, and what infrastructures are required to reconfigure them?
Isola Madre, Taranto 2021
These and other pressing questions gave rise to Re-Visiting Taranto. A photographic campaign spanning the entire metropolitan area, its goal is to observe the environmental context not just in ecological terms, but as a historical and cultural landscape as well.
The campaign documents the full geography of the territory under study and is structured around six urban areas identified by the Ecosistema Taranto plan for the economic, ecological, and energy transition of the city.
These areas include the historic city of the mother island, the 19th-century city and Umbertine district, the 20th-century industrial outskirts, green corridors, coastlines, and waterways. These zones form the geographical framework for the themes explored in the photographic campaign.
View of Isola Madre, with the Bell Tower of the Cathedral of San Cataldo at the Center, Taranto 2021
Re-Visiting Taranto is a journey into the phenomena that define the environmental, infrastructural, political, cultural, and anthropological history of this place. The photographic campaign seeks to foster a process of reflection—an experiment, much like a laboratory—that examines and tests the events of our time, the area’s economic, social, and political traditions, and even our own perspectives, as both observers and participants.
This is an experimental approach to probing events, experiences, and viewpoints in an effort to challenge and transform the rigid, seemingly immutable convictions that shape our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.
