lo vàco / il vuoto - lo vàco / the empty

The project called “lo vàco” is the result of an explorative research focused on the social perception of local contest of abandoned landscapes in the mountain country of Aosta Valley. The author worked in relationship with a structured anthropologist (Valentina Mnella) in order to discover how people feel and live the environment around themselves. Through interviews, questionnaires, family albums sharing and debates with high school students, the result is high presence of “vaco”: of empty. In the local dialect called “patois”, “lo vaco” (from latin “vacuus”) is the word used to call empty territories, even those that once were destined to agriculture or farm animals. The empty is the perception. Everything is empty they say. Everything changed: landscapes and territories turned into an apparently non recognizable reality which imposes the feeling of the empty. As a photographer I ask: is it possible to take a picture of the empty?