Poggioreale Vecchio

My Scholarship entry - The abandoned village of Poggioreale

Italy | Monday, November 17, 2014 | 5 photos

Well this is a bit tricky.

I am assuming that you have over a million over candidates who have a million equally good portfolios.

BUT

Unlike the others my assignment is deeply personal and a place few people have been. I travelled all the way to Sicily got in a car with two total strangers to visits a little village that no longer exists. It was the home of my grandfather and it was destroyed and left in ruins during the 1968 Belice earthquake.

The earthquake left over 200,000 people homeless, killed over 200, and destroyed my grandfathers little home town of Poggioreale.

Nothing remains of those inhabitants with the exception of the odd abandoned balcony which has a stairway leading to nothing, fig and cactus trees that grow from windows, and the smell of death.

I chose to photograph this completely in black and white and not in colour as that's the way I saw it, a place that no longer has life, no longer has any vital signs, and no longer has any colour worth photographing.

As for Poggioreale its inhabitants didn't have the connections or money of its neighbours instead, Poggioreale was left to remain as a reminder of the past left to decay as time marched on.