Abstract of the accomplished photographic work
An extreme weather event hit north-eastern Italy in October 2018. Sirocco winds surged through the Dolomites at 200 km/h, toppling 14 million trees. Over six years later, the effects of Storm Vaia remain visible. Through a stratified approach combining photography, archival material and scientific research, the project looks beyond fallen trees to explore deeper causes and long-term consequences—like the spread of the spruce bark beetle, a parasite drawn to weakened wood. Rather than showing destroyed houses or victims, the work focuses on the relationship between communities and nature. Storms have long shaped forests, but climate change is altering their frequency and intensity. Avoiding sensationalism, it highlights the complexity of this event. Developed near the author’s birthplace and through five years of work with Cosimo Bizzarri and the TESAF and DAFNAE departments at the University of Padua, There’s no calm after the storm explores human intervention and ecosystem resilience.
Description of the project you intend to pursue through the Prize
Thanks to the Grant, I would like to bring the project to schools in communities affected by extreme weather events. The aim is to initiate a dialogue with younger generations through the exhibition, but mostly through talks, readings, meetings, and workshops, inviting students to participate in collaborative projects and create new content inspired by the project’s stratified approach – combining images, family archives, local newspapers, text, drawings, and collages. The outcome can be a new small book, co-authored with the students, expanding the original work through their voices and perspectives. It will include selected materials from the workshops, with a design that reflects its collective and open nature. This is also a way to share photography as a relational practice – not to colonize a place, but to inhabit it, and to recognise the tension between the inner world of the author and the outer world that exists independently of us.