Altera Italia is a visual journey into the ritual culture of Southern Italy, a passage through time and space that questions the images with which the South has been depicted. Through manipulated archival photographs and new shots, the project reawakens a magical and symbolic dimension long removed from the anthropological and documentary gaze. Not to explain the rituals, but to restore their perceptual, spiritual, and communal complexity. An invitation to reconsider the past in order to imagine new possible futures.

A Symbolic Journey Through Southern Italy

Altera Italia was born as a journey: geographical, temporal, and symbolic. A crossing of Southern Italy that does not aim to explain, classify, or archive, but to reopen a space of imagination around the rituals that have contributed to shaping the identity of the South, and which, even today, persist as collective, magical, and communal practices.

A Gaze That Built Stereotypes

For decades, the South has been observed and depicted through an external gaze. Between the 1950s and 1960s, anthropological expeditions and neorealist cinema – especially thanks to the fundamental work of Ernesto De Martino – provided a visual heritage that is now indispensable, but also helped to fix a crystallized image of the South as an archaic and folkloric place, transforming a living culture into a museum object.

 

 

Re-signifying the Archive

Altera Italia takes a stance regarding this heritage by intervening on archival images. Using both analog and digital techniques – painting on negatives, collage, perforations – the photographs are manipulated to reintroduce the magical, ritual, and spiritual horizon removed by a positivist approach. Not to deny history, but to critically traverse it and reclaim it.

Rituals as a Living Experience

Alongside the work on archives, the project documents rituals still active in Southern Italy, photographed across six different regions. The aim is not to create a new anthropological catalog, but to build a visual narrative that evokes more than it describes, attempting to make the invisible visible and bring the viewer closer to the perceptual and cultural experience of the participant.

A Re-enchanted Imaginary

The result is an imaginary that is not didactic, suspended between past and present, where the ritual becomes a contemporary amulet. A unifying gesture that, in an increasingly connected yet less communal reality, continues to make the world inhabitable, magical, and shared.

 

 

 

The Book

This research gives rise to the book Altera Italia, set for release in 2026 by Miracoli Visivi and designed by Grupppo Studio. The volume, measuring 23 × 28 cm, will contain approximately 180 pages, over 100 photographs – many of them unpublished – 60 illustrations, and original texts. A separate booklet will feature contributions from scholars and ritual experts, offering different perspectives.

A Personal Voice

The book is structured in chapters that guide the reader on a symbolic journey. The narrative voice is that of the author, who chose to construct the volume as a personal manuscript of what has been seen, discovered, and recorded with the camera, starting from the understanding that rituals cannot be explained solely through rational analysis.

A Shared Project

Printed in 500 copies in Italy on Fedrigoni paper, Altera Italia will also be available in limited editions signed with photographic prints. The crowdfunding campaign supports a collective editorial process and a professional supply chain that ranges from design and printing to international distribution.

 

 

Rethinking the Imaginary of the South

Supporting Altera Italia means participating in the creation of a new imaginary of the South, rethinking the relationship between archive and present, memory and future. Not to explain the ritual, but to embrace its complexity and symbolic power, accepting that some experiences can only be traversed, not translated.

Click here to support the project.