The Stolen Country
This is a road trip following the trails of the “Incompiuto” in Italy. About a thousand unfinished buildings, infrastructures and urban planning operations abandoned and turned into a no-man’s-land.
Those pictures are a journey through an invisible country. A road trip spread out over 4 years following the trails of the Incompiuto in Italy. The term Incompiuto refers to a public work (a building, an infrastructure or an urban planning operation) that has not been completed. It remains, therefore, unusable. Those projects are often financed with EU funds.
Although in Italy this phenomenon is widely discussed, it is almost unknown outside the Italian borders.
There is no precise census of these works, it is estimated that there are thousands! Airports, bridges, dams, roads, schools, swimming pools and sports facilities, that are left to rot under the weather, devastated by vandalism and turned into a no-man’s-land. This photographic project aims to examine the phenomenon of the Incompiuto, from two different and yet converging points of view. The first one aims at highlighting the tragedy of the unfinished works on the social and environmental level. The second one focuses on some aesthetic aspects of the Incompiuto. Two axes of investigation which contribute both to explain the phenomenon in all its complexity.
Roberto Giangrande
