Volcano Generation

Volcano Generation is a photographic essay exploring the concept of growing up in the volcanic archipelago of the Aeolian islands, an handful of islands located in the south of Italy, offshore the coast of Sicily. By treasuring the importance of silence, long lasting friendships, isolation and a different notion of time, the Aeolian kids have learnt to create an intimate dialogue within themselves and with the nature around them. The island has framed their gaze, enabling them to create a special intimacy with the sea that surround them. The volcanoes, acting like a magnet on their life journey, have given them a unique sensibility, a maturity, a fearless a sense of belonging to the place they will always call home. Trying to combine together the time of the island which seems suspended in a crystalized past and the fast changing, dynamic time of adolescence , the project wishes to investigate how the islands’ own slow pace is shaping the present and future of the youth that inhabit them and how the island will trace their trajectories. By documenting the seasons of the archipelago and the nuances of its youth, the project, started in 2021 and continued in 2022 wishes to offer a glimpse into the most complex and fascinating moment of the lifetime, the teenagehood, torn between quiet melancholic winters, joyful summers and everything in between.