1 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
2 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
3 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
4 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
5 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
6 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
7 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
8 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
9 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Stromboli’s main cemetery. Aeolian Islands, Italy.
10 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
11 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
12 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
13 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
14 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
15 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
A flower of Burgmansia. The tropane alkaloids the plant contains are toxic, and they can act as anticholinergic and deliriants. The plant can be put to medical use, but it has also been employed by shamans in South American cultures for medical rituals of initiation and black magic. Stromboli, Aeolian Islands, Italy.
16 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
17 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
18 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
19 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
20 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
21 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
22 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
A major explosion of Stromboli volcano at 10.17 CET on November 16, 2020. The event produced a cloud of ashes that rose about 1 km high over the peak and a pyroclastic flow that came down the Sciara del Fuoco (Sicilian for Road of Fire) reaching the sea. The explosion did not cause any damages to human beings or properties. According to the Laboratory of Geophysics of the University of Florence (LGS) the explosion was major and not paroxysmal. “It surpassed the criterion of amplitude (0.3 microrad) expected by the Early Warning Paroxysmal alert system but it didn’t surpass the threshold of duration of the inflation of the ground that precedes paroxysmal eruptions. It did not go beyond the threshold of 0.85 that the automatic alert system is set at, so the alarm was not triggered.” Aeolian Islands, Italy.
23 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Pasquale Sabatino, producer and taxi driver from Naples, living on Stromboli island. Aeolian Islands, Italy.
24 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
25 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
26 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Karin Melbi, Swedish nurse who lives on Stromboli. Aeolian Islands, Italy.
27 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
28 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
29 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
30 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
31 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Ciro Aragione, Napolitanian cook who lives on Stromboli since the 90s, is photographed at his house on the island. Aeolian Islands, Italy.
32 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
33 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
34 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Clients of the Hotel Ossidiana, close to the port on Stromboli island. Aeolian Islands, Italy.
35 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
36 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
37 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
38 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
39 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
40 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
41 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
42 of 42
© 2021 Gaia Squarci
Public Story
Ashes and Autumn Flowers
Credits:
gaia squarci
Updated: 01/04/21
There are about 1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide, above and below sea level. Aware of the danger they could pose, undeterred by the monstrous mythology they generated, an estimated 500 million people live close to them.
From the peak of Stromboli, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, you can see two villages crawling on the slopes, caught between the craters and the Tyrrhenian sea. The mountain and its rumbles set the rhythm of life for the residents of Stromboli, pervading the territory with an energy that makes the fragility of human life almost tangible.
Summer 2019 hit the island with two major eruptions, one of which made a victim. Excursions to the craters are indefinitely closed and the islanders, whose economy relies on tourism, wait for the high season with concern. For centuries the Mountain has embodied the identity of the island, writing its chapters of history. It forced most people to emigrate after the fatal eruptions of 1919 and 1930 and it gave some the possibility to come back, attracting tourism and new jobs in the 50’s, after Roberto Rossellini chose the island to shoot Stromboli Terra di Dio. Residents have no way to know what this new chapter will bring. They go by their routine, looking up at the smoke of the craters every day to see in which direction the wind blows.
Working on the ancestral relationship between mankind and volcanoes I realized how the craters function like a broken time-machine that connects our imagination, intermittently, to the past of planet Earth, its future, and to other planets. Stromboli, with its black mountain looming over, the strength of the elements and its inebriating smell of autumn flowers, reactivates the kind of sensibility that gets lost in the routine of the city life, the one that enables us to see death as a part of life.
Residents call the volcano “Iddu”, Sicilian for “He”, like a god who can’t be named and a friend you live with every day.