Like a pebble in a glass
Next 9 October marks the 50th anniversary of the Vajont tragedy, from Mount Toc a landslide fell into the reservoir of the dam built in the Vajont Valley, on the border between Friuli and Veneto, the overflow caused a flood that destroyed four municipalities with the death of 1917 people. The Italian writer Dino Buzzati, who was a native of the destroyed area, commented on the tragedy in the pages of the Corriere della sera newspaper to give a more effective account of what happened that October night: it was like a stone in a glass…
I set up this work imagining
of finding in my hands, photographs
that time has slowly eroded the vividness of their colours.
The erosion of memory.
After the drama, the despair in the face of such an immense tragedy,
In memory, man, to alleviate his sense of guilt
erects a shrine on which to dwell and question himself.
In the smallness of man remains
the pain and despair
of an embrace of tears.
And as is written in an epitaph
at the entrance to the Vajont Victims Museum:
“No, death does not end everything
if a thousand white crosses
have remained nameless
now become relics
for our consciences…”
Enzo Crispino
