This is a visual odyssey that takes us through key industrial sites across Italy. With the passage of time, and for one reason or another, each of these once-renowned sites has fallen into disuse and, ultimately, decay.
At different periods and in different ways, each of these plants at one time had a major impact on the locations they occupied and, as a consequence, the entire country.
In order to create the catalogue of images that make up Urbanscapes, Sandro Santioli dutifully traversed the full span of the Italian peninsula from North to South, islands included.
To fully engage with this subject matter, the photographer thought to fully immerse himself in the very fabric of these abandoned workplaces, many still heavily infused with memories of a past life.
Astutely tracing its steps and listening for its echoes, Santioli attempts to piece together a world that may well have ceased to exist, however its significance is still strongly felt today.
Indeed, in searching for clues to how a country was able to achieve any given level of technological or manufacturing prowess, or even explain some of its economic or social shifts and transformations, you need look no further than the abandoned landscape of its industrial archaeology, if it exists.
In other words, the links are there and simply need to be uncovered and dusted off: at that point we will rediscover the essential relationships between what exists today and what once existed.
We ought to simply look back at what we once were and, in light of all we then acknowledge, take stock of what we are now.
“All the silent, rusty old equipment,” – Santioli recounts, referring to the abandoned mercury mine at Mount Amiata – “the countless, ordered lines of windows caked in layers of unforgiving dust, the imposing concrete beams and fixtures…those mighty pavilions spanning multiple floors and supporting rows of huge pipes.
There, the beams of light that shone through the intricate overhead structures made for an intriguing play of light and shadow, in turn, casting a keen light on thousands of otherwise unremarkable details.
At various intervals you would stumble upon a personal trinket lost or left behind by the last group of workers. This myriad of elements was fertile ground for my imagination and represented an immense treasure trove; a creative challenge that stood ready to breathe welcome new life into my creativity.”
This abandoned mine is particularly close to the author’s heart.
For decades, his father counted among the hundreds of workers occupying the main mining site, its offices and all the related sites on a daily basis.
In this regard, the value of the opportunity to photograph this site, for Santioli, was twofold.
On one hand, he was fortunate to be in a position to document the decline of a site so large and shrouded in controversy both in terms of its output and its social and environmental impact.
On the other hand, it represented an opportunity to finally link missing facets of his personal family history.
With this project, he was able to enter and engage with spaces that, for many years throughout his childhood, existed only in his imagination, pieced together, as they were, from various anecdotes shared in a cloistered family setting.
Given this background, it is therefore no coincidence that Santioli has dedicated a lot of time and attention to this bygone world. Across both the monochrome and color work there is a nearly palpable sense of emotion behind every scene the photographer focuses on.
In addition to all the technical and narrative qualities present across the wider Urbanscapes series, this volume, by extension, continues to inform all his extensive studies on landscapes.
Santioli’s approach seeks to not merely ‘describe’ these environments, but to ‘interpret’ them for the viewer. He deftly reconfigures light and angles and reinserts these elements into what might be termed an ‘alternate space’ – one that manages to mirror all that is evoked by the elements making up that particular moment.
The photographer’s painstakingly deliberate compositions capture an array of miniscule but significant details, present offbeat perspectives employing various unusual camera angles and, ultimately, all the work is infused with Santioli’s customary ‘constructivist’ characteristics.
This atypical and highly recognizable signature style of his alternates with some of his more classically-shot images, reminiscent of the atmosphere and figurative layout of the industrial photography of the Sixties era.
Whether or not this is intentional is not revealed, however the result is that the viewer comes away with the feeling of having a profound connection with not only the spirit of a time and a place they have never experienced, but also with a sense of being in rhythm with the author’s feeling while physically there.
This collection can be described as one of silent shards of memory that, by contrast, faithfully depict and recreate a buzzing and often chaotic world full of vitality.
Across this collection of images, the remnants of ‘that which once was’ have a direct bearing on what is now the status quo.
Case in point: this is very much evident whether looking at the machines photographed in situ at the factories or in the surrounding areas of the abandoned plants of Ca’ Vendramin or the old magnetite mines on Elba Island set within those hauntingly beautiful landscapes, adorned with its characteristic thick fog and deep blue tones throughout.
It is also present in images of the stern, sentry-like information boards of yesteryear and the modern-day graffiti that you find interspersed throughout the disused Lucca and Port Marghera tobacco factories.
The mood carries over into the images of all the wobbling, rust-lined air-ducts and equipment on site at the abandoned Nebida and Montevecchio mines and over in Sardinia, where nowadays the sole legitimate occupant appears to be wild vegetation.
If we focus our minds, however, it certainly does not require much imagination to still be able to hear the animated voices of the workers and marvel at the intensity of their labour at any of these vacated sites.
Easy to imagine, too, the slow, lamenting screech of gears in motion, the ubiquitous whirr of enormous running turbines and the piercing siren that signaled the end of one shift and the start of another.
Santioli has skillfully captured the present-day wastelands that these fallen industrial sites have become in a way that offers an evocative re-creation of their history and legacy to viewers perhaps not old enough to have had any firsthand experience of them at their productive peaks. For this project, he has reached into his toolkit and drawn on his authentic signature style.
As a final observation, these images offer a tiny glimpse into early power-relationships and the outsized influence borne by the industrial sector over a given population and territory that plays host to it.
Also not to be ignored is a subtle though detectable commentary on nature, which perhaps looks set to reclaim what rightfully belongs to it.
(Review by Stefania Biamonti)