Sicilian photographer Ferdinando Scianna has been chosen to interpret in images the Bio-Mediterranean cluster pavilion at the food-themed Universal Exposition in Milan.
Photographs by the 72-year-old photographer from the province of Palermo are to form a permanent exhibition in the collective pavilion uniting 11 countries including Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Malta and Tunisia and the Sicily region whose task is to 'narrate' the development of the culinary traditions that have grown up in the Mediterranean basin. "The exhibition in the cluster is divided into four themes and narrates an idea of the Mediterranean," Scianna explained.
"In the photographs I tell of the food, the memoy of rituals and tradition: I hope they might give the emotional idea of my relationship with these places," he continued. Born in Bagheria in 1943 and a friend of the late writers Leonardo Sciascia and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Scianna was the first and only Italian to join the prestigious international Magnum Photos agency in 1989. He says he feels Sicily deeply inside himself despite having an international gaze on the world.
"My personal history has led me to live outside Sicily for almost half a century," he said during the presentation of a recent exhibition on Sicily in Rome.
"Or rather, I knew with an obscure kernel of shame that I had run away from Sicily. But little by little I realised over time that you never leave Sicily entirely, that such a dramatically strong sense of belonging cannot be destroyed," Scianna concluded. Expo 2015 opens in Milan on May 1 on the theme 'Feeding the planet, energy for life'.
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