The Last Journey

THE LAST JOURNEY

Alessandra Baldoni

My project is inspired by Giovanni Pascoli's poem L'ultimo viaggio (1904). The work begins where the Odyssey ends. Many years have passed and Ulysses, aged and driven by nostalgia, decides to resume the sea with his old companions and revisit the places of his adventures. However, Ulysses discovers that everything has changed: he no longer meets the creatures he had come across in the past and believing that these were only the result of his imagination, he seeks confirmation by approaching the island of the mermaids. But the mermaids do not sing any song. At the passage of Ulysses and his men they remain mute and the hero, trying to challenge them, begins to delirious. Retracing back the route of his famous journey, Ulysses realizes that nothing is as he remembered it ... the cyclops, the monsters, the encounters, the incredible adventures and begins to wonder if what he believes he has lived was just an illusion, a dream or a story told at the whim of the gods. He feels life give way, assailed by bitterness he reaches the island in search of Calypso, the goddess who once offered him love and immortality. With my photos and my words, I told the nostalgia and feelings of Ulysses, his restlessness, the wound that led him to Ithaca and then make him start again.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

They wrote about me thousands of hexameters like crazy ants on the page. They called me in many manners, they told about my journey by sea. But the sea is a rope tied to the ankles, he lets go and then he holds. He never forgives. If it were all true, I would have died a thousand dead. But poetry always lies, and this is the reason why we need it. 

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

A gesture of modesty. The hand approaches and a tremor starts that cracks the surface of the skin. Your eyes meet my face eaten by salt, bent by the sea. The shipwrecked, the man beaten by the winds, You put your robe back on, pulled your hair back. Women have thin armor made of silk and fierce armies hidden in their wombs. Every time I lost without understanding my own lie, every time I just took but fate chewed me and spat me in the water. I am a ghost made of foam, I am the enemy hiding in the mist.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

They wrote about me thousands of hexameters like crazy ants on the page. They called me in many manners, they told about my journey by sea. But the sea is a rope tied to the ankles, he lets go and then he holds. He never forgives. If it were all true, I would have died a thousand dead. But poetry always lies, and this is the reason why we need it. 

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

Ithaca stands still, held by the weight of the stones and by the blinding light. Ithaca does not exist, it is just dirt and rocks and wind screaming to leave. When I came back I was vanishing, I no longer recognized my face. What are the years. They are a hanging noose swinging like a seesaw. I chose to leave again.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

I held my breath hidden inside a wooden horse. I was waiting to set Troy on fire and finally return home. I won by deception. My enemies fear me and my own comrades too. The gods played with me, I was a prisoner of whims and revenge. I was never afraid. But now I realize that memory disappears, I look for places and faces but nothing resembles what is told about me. Maybe I am the deception. To believe that there is a glory not to see that we are only slender shadows in a cold land.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

I have seen fish running fast, eyes wide open with terror, eyes of blue stone omen of storm. A god calls, a god thunders. I rest in a cave, I am tired of my past. Nothing is like it used to be. Maybe I just slept of a dream dreamed of by others, maybe I am the lie of an oracle.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
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Looking at it now it seems just a dream, a mirage that appears and disappears. Like a covered mirror that reflects shadows. 

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
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 I should have stayed with you. Hiding with you, escaping Hades. Nostalgia dug a hole in my heart and eyes. Stupid man who craves what he does not have, who looks for stone when he can drink in golden glasses and eat ambrosia. Ithaca was you, it was your body. Calypso.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

My body is made of wounds. Scars. Of the battle, of the storms and shipwrecks, of the tight ropes to resist the Sirens. Signs of the fight with monsters. Shadows carried with me from the underworld. My body is a map of abandonment, deaths and wrecks. It is the sharp cliff on which ships crash. 

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
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Spume and seed. Body pressing. The push. I was water, river between the thighs, marine desire. A possession made of salt, a possession that always hurts. I was just seeking me, just trying to tell myself I was alive. Overbearing in the grip, sword of flesh. I am the horse, I am who is hiding waiting to set everything on fire. And then, here I am. Now I know that I have created only ashes. 

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
i

My face surrenders, my face collapses. I lose pieces of myself like entire continents vanished from the maps. I am a geographic map that turns white, a milky nothingness without cardinal points, while the sea eats the earth. Big blue mouth always wide open. I am a fresco that crumbles, a stone ruined by time. Yet I once remembered, the routes were certain and certain were the shipwrecks. I remembered the encounters, I had signs of clashes. It was certain the blood . Poured out, offered to the indifferent gods, weeping, cursed. Now there is nothing left, they are just stories told by others, invented, changed. Voices more and more distant. Red my rob, it becomes a looted sanctuary.

© Alessandra Baldoni - Image from the The Last Journey photography project
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I am a broken statue, an empty bust echoing the sea. I am hollow, I am a time-cleansed bone, pecked by the hunger of birds. My words do not count, they dig holes in the earth and disappear under a plot of branches. The full dominates me, my name said everywhere. I arrived at the place of abandonment, I returned to where I chose death. Here remains the silence. And finally I do not hear any more call - Odysseus.

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