INTRACCIÀ

How do we embrace a place we love? I tried to explore the links that make up the Corsican identity through the register of my sensations. Intraccià is the reflect of my subjectivity, a love letter photographed on the roads of what has became my home.

I shout your name, clinging to the rail of the ferry as it slowly pulls me away from your rocky shores. Puzzled or amused passengers stare at me, unsure whether the Libecciu roaring over the deck is getting to my head. Island of my heart, this isn’t a farewell, just a goodbye. You took me in as your child and allowed me, the son of nowhere, to spread out my roots.

In my suitcase I am taking with me countless memories and stories of women and men, who confided in me and share a common pride of their island. There are those who have pledged their love forever and those who fight furiously. There is one whose ashes are now in the peaceful seawaters where we will keep bathing. There is the one that weeps in silence under the great starry sky. There is the one who takes a life in the maquis and gets an offering. And there’s the one who reads life’s fortune in a drop of olive oil.

Here or elsewhere, how do we embrace a place we love?

You’re already no more than a lifeline on the horizon, and your soul-stirring songs vibrate in my ears. The swell tosses me from memory to memory, tinged with the ochre of the mountains and the pristine azure. In the solitude of winter, I drive aimlessly along the winding roads of the enchanting Orezza valley. Chestnuts pour down and end their journey with a loud crash on the roof. In Moriani, I stop to salute the mournful memorial to Pasquale Paoli, with my back to the sea. I’m lost on a path to the Punta di u Furneddu, where I would like to spend the night, hidden in the arms of the maquis.

All this time, I’ve been looking for traces along your paths in the hope of becoming just another stone among the ruins. I’ve studied your landscapes, I’ve drunk from your springs, I’ve danced in your villages. And now that you’ve seen me born as myself, I’m going to continue my wanderings. Always on the move, I leave only to return.

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That's the question I've been asking myself with my photography as I criss-cross Corsica for the past six years. Through a poetic and intimate tale, I set out to explore my own emotions, looking for snippets of answers to a game of questions and answers in the images I gather, with an insatiable thirst for the experiences of those who walk this land. Leaving aside my approach as a journalist, I was able to embark on this new journey without a destination, that of exploring the feelings that this island provokes in me, and the questioning of my own identity that it inspires. Far from the expected clichés, I'm looking for sensitive traces to redraw an intimate and poetic map of Corsica. Intraccià is the fruit of my wanderings, my love and my inexplicable feeling of belonging to a land that is not my own.

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Intraccià will published as a book in June 2024 by Saetta Books during the Rencontres d'Arles.