Icarus Dream: on Angelo wings.

I have always been fascinated by flight and the flying people: aviators, pilots, paragliders. The figure that most attracted me since my teenage years, was the sicilian aviator Angelo D’Arrigo (known as the “The Human Condor”), who in 2004 flew over Everest in gliding. He was also an ornithologist, and used to fly with the condors that had adopted. I followed his story and legendary figure through National Geographic and documentaries, until his death in 2006 in a plane accident which shocked all the "flying world". But fortunately people and place have memory. I approached to his world in the small town of Letojanni, close to Taormina, where Angelo used to fly. Here I met his widow Laura and sons, the collaborators and friend pilots, who In the last years have followed Angelo’s examplary love for flight making the sunny beach of Letojanni a strong source of attraction for paragliders from all over Italy and abroad. The city of Letojanni (recently named as "City of Flight", 2015) has dedicated a square to Angelo and here is still fully working the "Etna Fly" school which he founded 20 years ago. Its pilots give tourists also the opportunity to fly in a tandem paragliding with expert pilots, such as Massimo Cantarella and Marco Busetta enjoying the beautiful landscape over Taormina. Nowadays it is still active also the "Carnival Fly" Festival which Angelo D’Arrigo organized for the first time in 1997. This is a special annual event in which pilots fly with homemade flying masks during carnival period or in a weekend of late June. With my photographs I'd like to show how all these activities make the “Icarus dream” of Angelo, the love for flight in Sicily, is still alive and through the memory of him spread to posterity.