cartagine

Year: 2022 / 2023
Location: Melfi, Basilicata, Italy

"Carthage? Why Carthage? Because, just like in Carthage, here, every day, it burns..."

It is a story of summer fires—forest fires, field fires—fire in its most primal form, experienced and endured by both land and man in relation to an extremely diverse landscape: Mediterranean scrub, wheat-covered hills, forests, pine woods, and a wind farm as vast as an entire region.

The story unfolds through the efforts of the "forest fire-fighting" teams from Melfi (PZ), special units of the Fire Brigade active from mid-June to mid-September, whose role is to manage the continuous emergencies caused by the fires.

The day portrayed in the reportage loses its temporal boundaries—24, 48, 72 hours, it doesn’t matter. The sole objective is to contain the fires: the same ones as the year before, same fields, same lands...