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.