Uncommon Ostia

UNCOMMON OSTIA Places that surround us and that host the flow of our daily lives, the places of our habits often disappear from our sight no longer have a shape. Our attention is attracted only by what is not ours and the landscape of every day becomes gray and unappealing. Because my personal story and great affection for traditions and family, my photographic journey is often facing the common life. My point of view never wants to be special. It is the vision of a person who travels to familiar places looking for unusual things in ordinary lives. A crossroad, a structure, a building, a parking lot that disappears from our sight in everyday life, it becomes for me the place of an extraordinary event. When I go out to take pictures, I abandon myself to the landscape, regardless of whether this is or is not behind my house. My travels led me to Ostia, today a few kilometers from the place where I live. I happen to go both in winter and in summer. In the Italian collective imagination Ostia is the destination of Roman vacation, a seaside town crowded and irreverent, steeped in ancient Rome, and often a source of clichés. In the 1950s, in its golden age, Ostia was popular among movie stars and characters of any kind, hosting the summer version of the "Dolce Vita". Today Ostia is a bit 'resigned', as a middle-aged lady who still has not realized that the years have passed for her. In its architecture and its desolate landscapes you still read the traces of a past pomp on Sunset Boulevard.