The Passenger - Sicily

Looking at a map, an island gives us the illusion of being a small world unto itself. With its well-defined boundaries, it seems to contain a society impervious to the passage of time and seasons, easier to decipher because it is sheltered from the ever-changing complexity of the world. But this is a mystification, especially if—like Sicily—it lives under the protection of one of the most powerful and unyielding imaginations that such a small place has ever managed to create. Behind the island "built and rebuilt by books, films, paintings, black and white photography" today there is a new one, hidden, but no less real for that. The urban and metropolitan one, the one of landings, the one of wine and tropical fruit. A Sicily sometimes invisible like the poisons that the second largest petrochemical hub in Europe discharges into the sea and air. Like the migrants arriving in Lampedusa, kept at a distance from the paths of tourists and locals. Like the outflow of population that gives it the sad record among Italian regions for emigration. A place where extremes coexist, like the central districts in Palermo, where the capital of culture vibrates and the invisible city of crack languishes. Sicily where climate changes are transforming the agricultural landscape, increasingly at risk of flooding and desertification, and some take advantage of it to replace vines with coffee and avocado. Far from trying to explain it, the following pages collect postcards from this new Sicily. They are blurred images, because the subject is in great motion. Because Sicily too moves and, yes, changes.