Nel paese dei gigli selvatici

Fonzaso is a small Veneto municipality located on the edge of the plain between the looming Mount Avena and the more distant Grappa massif. The municipality is an important road junction to the west of the Piave Valley, providing transit and access to the Valsugana and Primero. In July 2022, accompanied by an unexpected burst of heat, amidst the mountains, pastures and often precipitous slopes, amidst the barches that were used to harvest hay and under "Barch", according to various legends, the most beautiful love stories were consummated, I met these lilies, the inhabitants of this place, present with constant punctuality in the usual places, in a square surrounded by a bar, a hardware store and the seat of the municipality, like long-lived plants waiting to tell their tale. Like a chaotic book (à la Chatwin), which goes far beyond the conventional limits of storytelling, mixing reportage, autobiography, ethnology, essay and oral memory, I set myself the goal of not telling a story, but of searching for connections, plots, interweavings to broaden or even better colour the vision of a place unknown to my eyes. My idea stems from an attempt to "fragment a large scenario into luminous splinters", to bring to light, through the people I met, a possible but untrue personal vision of this place. "In the Land of the Wild Lilies" attempts to tell the story of the inhabitants of this place, who like these flowers, considered "protected" and not to be picked in any way, remain rooted to the flow of their lives, firmly rooted to their land and whom I have met even if only for the time of a crossing. The project is the result of an artistic residency "VOICES participatory photography" promoted by DolomitiHub in Fonzaso.

Many varieties of lilies exist in nature; they have adapted to climates and many ecosystems. We find them in Asia, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Europe. Biodiversity is the maximum expression of the planet's adaptive capacity of life forms. Still, when observing our species, especially in an urban environment, we disavow its evolutionary character. Cities tend to be similar regarding people's performance, expectations, and beliefs. Humans shrink in them to almost disappear and appear as tiny insignificant gears carried here and there by a wind of indifference. The further we move away from the urban concrete, or the more the scale of the settlement reduces, the more the human being tends to show up and re-establish a relationship with the places to the point that it would be difficult to understand the spaces regardless of their inhabitants. Sometimes the word "Genuis loci" indicates this unique alchemy that describes the sense of places. The series of photographs by Francesca Loprieno is inspired in the title by the wild lilies that grow in Fonzaso, a small town in the Grappa massif. It is a hymn to the local people, those seeking authenticity, a soup of signs and hints like faces torn from History, the giant one that too often forgets people because it is busy chasing dates and records. So this is photography that betrays the great History and presses it with human nuances and a soil aftertaste.