For the first time in North America after a successful debut at the Italian Cultural Institute in Hamburg (Germany), the researcher in architecture and urban studies and photographer Corinna Del Bianco shows the public Archipelago — her photographic journey through the Mediterranean islands.
Some of the images, in particular those of the Italian islands – from Egadi to the Aeolian, passing through the Pelagie and the Tuscans – will be featured until September 16th, 2022, on the namesake exhibition “Archipelago” held at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal (Italian Cultural Institute of Montréal, Canada), with six unpublished works, printed in large format and exhibited in the Institute’s entrance courtyard. The show has been produced in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institutes of Montreal and Hamburg, and with the funds raised by the crowdfunding campaign created ad-hoc for the exhibition, which included the sale of the exhibition catalog as the main perk.
Archipelago is a long-term research project that was born in 2018 from an idea by Corinna Del Bianco to document the diversity of the Mediterranean islands. It focuses on all archipelagos and, in particular, on inhabited islands. The theme of living, always present in the photographer’s studies, mixes with that of the journey through the cultural and landscape heritage.
Archipelago is, in fact, a collection of places united by the strong link between the mainland, the sea, the architectural typologies of the houses and the morphology of the settlements.
During the second half of the twentieth century, most of the Mediterranean islands devoted themselves to tourism, a great economic resource, that went hand in hand with an abandonment of their history, their production, and therefore also their cultural identity. Among the most representative Italian examples, we find the Elba Island which, since the time of the Etruscans was a reference point for the steel industry, with its quarries for iron extraction, and Favignana which, thanks to fishing and the production of tuna led by the Florio family, was an important innovator worldwide. This production tradition, closely linked to the natural context of the individual islands and that once determined their economic, social and cultural development, has now been annihilated and, in the best cases, remembered in museums that are visited only by the most curious travelers.
Nowadays, the diversity of the individual islands tends to be remembered only for the landscape or for the clear waters to which thousands of people flock seasonally and in which they immerse themselves. Archipelago was born with the intention of telling the value of the cultural identity of the Italian and Mediterranean islands and archipelagos to all those who visit and experience them.
In addition to the photographic and artistic documentation focused on the living and the architecture of the different islands, Corinna Del Bianco offers a selection of reading and graphic maps that report not only the contour lines and the morphological information of the inhabited settlements but also the bathymetric lines that characterize their seabeds. Thanks also to the various instruments, the project contributes to the 2005 UNESCO Convention for the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity with regard to forms of life in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. The photographer’s ongoing project is currently focusing on the Campanian Archipelago and the Greek one of the Cyclades Islands. Corinna Del Bianco presents in the exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute of Montréal the photographs of some of the islands of four important Italian archipelagos: Egadi (Favignana), Aeolian (Stromboli), Pelagie (Lampedusa, Linosa) and Toscane (Elba, Giglio). The Archipelago book that was created to accompany the exhibition and as the main perk of the crowdfunding campaign launched on indiegogo can be purchased at the IIC Montréal or through Corinna Del Bianco’s website.
Project Details
- Project: Archipelago
- Photographer: Corinna Del Bianco
- Exhibition: “Archipelago”, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal
- Dates: 8 June — 16 September 2022
- Islands on Show: Egadi (Favignana), Aeolian (Stromboli), Pelagie (Lampedusa, Linosa) and Tuscans (Elba, Giglio)
