Nostalgia, the word we use to define our affectionate longing for the past, comes from the greek nostos "return home" and algos "pain". Nostos is the journey and the perilous return of the Homeric hero, and this lack, this melancholy desire, comes first of all from a sense of belonging to a place, a deep bond with our roots. Those of Camilla Piana are found in the hilly valleys crossed by the Trebbia river, in Emilia-Romagna. She was reading La luna e i falò in the summer of 2017, when this work began, back home, just a few months before she lost her father. If Camilla's project shares with Cesare Pavese's masterpiece a strong connection with her origins, tinged with melancholy, she does not seem to have lost the enchanted gaze of childhood, her return is not veiled with the harsh disappointment felt by Anguilla, the protagonist of the book. In a rural world bathed in sunlight, her images are still pervaded by a fairytale atmosphere. An almost childlike curiosity and wonder accompany her discovery of little details, objects, shadows and forms. Her photographs emerge in the folds between documentary and poetry, fragments of everyday experiences and encounters. She plays with colors and the chromatic force of primary tones, yellows, reds, blues. The heroes of her fairytale are the local neighbors, the men and women living in the village and surrounding area, who carry the memories and the histories of this land. She glances at the white hair, the wrinkles, the signs of old age with sympathy, respect, a little tenderness. Yet, like in most fairy tales, the lightness, even a certain humor, are blurred with an impalpable gravity, un indefinite feeling of strangeness and precariousness. This is also a story of loss, of mourning. Of holding on fleeting moments in the apparent timelessness of habits and landscapes, of confronting the fragility of life with the strength of memory and affection. 

Rachele Ceccarelli