A large part of Italian political history from the last fifty years is shrouded in mystery. Until today, some of the stories and events—public and private, major and minor—remain untold, dismissed, and even censored. From north to south, the country often finds itself united in the name of forgetfulness.

On the other hand, memory—intended as personal and collective history—is a powerful medium through which people recall lost belongings and reclaim what has been forgotten and stolen from them.

In the 1960s, in the midst of the so-called “economic miracle,” Italy’s cultural and political powers established substantial processes of transformation: in the name of progress, they stimulated new roads, new machines and industries, and in doing so, a new identity. They transformed territories and traditions. To fulfill this new identity, the most isolated areas had to connect with one another technically and politically. The most remote souls and attitudes had to be folded into the promise of change.

The Calabria region in southern Italy, the case study for our visual exploration, is an ancient land where the challenge of modernity has imposed its language and aesthetics, slowly oppressing the territory’s human and natural landscape. “In Fourth Person” is a multimedia research project about piecing together the fragmented narrative of its anthropological, geopolitical and environmental transformation over the last 50 years.

Created along the A3 Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, the symbolic storyline of our project, the series investigates the iconography and the stories of a landscape suspended between utopia and betrayal. Photographs, objects, documents and videos are reassembled as a collective mosaic of an imaginary us: in fourth person.

—Martin Errichiello & Filippo Menichetti

Now in its 7th year, Circulation(s) is a Paris-based festival that showcases young and emerging photographic talents from across Europe. In the weeks leading up to this year’s edition, opening on January 21, we will be sharing some of our favorite photographers from the program. We’re also excited to be working with Circulation(s) as an official media partner. Look out for more information regarding the festival in the weeks to come!

After Circulations, this work will be shown at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, as the artists were selected for Plat(t)form 2017. In March, “In Quarta Persona” will be exhibited at FORMAT Festival in Derby, UK.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like one of these previous features: Before Everything Gets Lost, a four-year journey through southern Italy; L’abandon du nid, Panayis Chrysovergis’s photographs of ruins in the Greek countryside—with a twist; and Le Grand Silence, about a modern-day shepherd living in solitude.