Four fires and six souls

This project follows the lives of the only six inhabitants on the receding town of Civita di Bagnoregio, which lies in the middle of the Calanchi Valley, in the center of the Italian peninsula.

Civita di Bagnoregio lies in the middle of the Calanchi Valley, in the centre of the Italian peninsula. Surrounded by a sea of mist, the village is currently populated by six people and it is connected to the mainland by a narrow bridge.

It was built 2500 years ago by the Etruscans on a hill of tufa rock, which is now crumbling 7 cm per year due to the erosion. This fragile condition transformed the town into a touristic attraction and more than 1 milion tourists have walked the Civita bridge in the last four years.

This phenomenon had an impact on the life of the town: Ivana, Mario, Tony, Rossana, Antonio, Felice and Realino, the poet of the valley, are still living there in a sense of precariousness between the solid past of a farming village and the unknown future of a collapsing ground.

I started the project in January 2018. I wanted to understand in depth the lives of the inhabitants and try to portray their feelings of love for the place that shaped themselves and the fear of seeing it slowly vanishing - both geologically and culturally.