Memories of a Trip to Sicily by Edmondo de Amicis

Note: The Beinecke Library at Yale University holds large prints of the photos included in the book. At a more advanced level, students can be required to develop projects about Italian emigration to Argentina as well as research the sources of the quotations to create a digital hypertext. The series of images can be used at any level of language and cultural acquisition for mere descriptive exercises with the goal of expanding vocabulary or for story telling inspired by the subjects of the photos. Behind her project lies the belief that the exploration of the history of Italian emigration sheds light on the comprehension of contemporary flows into Italy. Her journey is one of recognition of familiar traits and traditions that nonetheless remains conscious of the displacement brought about by migration. Influenced by a philosophy of historical preservation of “defeated” communities (as she called the rural villagers of Piedmont, the slum dwellers of Abruzzo, the women working in factories in Italy and in Cuba), Agosti’s look in the Argentinian project is one that subtly combines curiosity towards these individuals and the desire to register their transplanted lives in a place that is not Italy, and yet it is (the colònias were often named after Italian prominent figures like Silvio Pellico or Cavour, or cities like Torino in Nueva Torino). One that captures the project as a whole is by Italian Ambassador to Argentina Ludovico Incisa di Camerana: “Argentina for Italians is not a foreign land: it is a destiny that has won over of the absence of a geographical connection.”

The photographs are paired by perfectly pitched quotations coming from the most diverse sources (poems, novels, songs, etc.) that simultaneously function as minute illustrations and lyrical suggestions. The black and white images depict moments of daily life in work, religious, domestic and entertainment spaces, as well as the streets and the countryside. This book gathers a selection of Paola Agosti‘s photographs taken during her late 1980s-early1990s stay in Argentina to document the presence of Italian immigrants in the Pampas gringas, where colonies of Piedmontese moved since the late 1880s.

Memories of a Trip to Sicily by Edmondo de Amicis