An
ill-famed region - Tell your neighbour or caretaker or doctor that you
spend your holiday there and they will start commenting on the mafia,
the poverty of villages, the ignorance of its inhabitants, the dirtiness
of its streets. Reality, is, as often, different and more complex. Indeed,
few people know it used to be an important Greek colony, few people will
tell you about the splendor of its landscapes and the fantastic welcome
they give you. Not to mention its cuisine, its hundred year old olive-trees
so huge and twisted. The soil is arid, as hard as the life of its inhabitants.
Proud though they are, they are realistic about the difficulties the region
has to cope with. Those who had to leave have enriched the north or other
countries, but lots of young people today would not leave their authentic
land and their well-being for anything on earth.
Locride
is bathed by Ionian sea whose crystal like waters are bordered by long
sand beaches or shingles. Nature is almost untouched, the atmosphere is
magic so unlike television "clichés". The villages, on the top of the
surrouding hills or nestled at the foot of the mountains can only be reached
through small winding roads and open themselves to visitors like small
caskets. Caulonia, Riace, Pazzano, Roccella, Stignano, Stilo, Gerace,
Placanica; quiet during the long winter months, are populated in summer
when the people who moved by poverty and had been forced to leave their
own land, return. The small squares and the streets are alive again. Children
invade the streets on which they play while adults talk sipping their
coffee. And when the Saint Patron's day approaches, everybody is busy
with their preparations in order to have the most beautiful decorations
and the best brass-band. The procession unwinds its way along the streets
punctuated by the brass, the cymbals and the bass-drum, while people are
walking behind them letting themselves be slowly wrapped in the last rays
of the sun.
Photographies of this gallery are coming from a black and white work of several years that I continue to lead. I would be glad to receive your comments. Thank you for your visit.
