It had over 1,500 visitors in just one month of opening and for this reason, in addition to the quality of the works, the virtual photo exhibition “For all the ‘I love you’s’, we forgot to say” by Cindi Emond (in the pic) has been extended until December and can therefore still be visited on the link https://cindiemondcontact2021.com
A great satisfaction for the Italian-Canadian photographer, who lives in Rome, also for another reason: just today, June 1st, the Italian Heritage Month started and the exhibition of Cindi’s shots represents a perfect ideal bridge between Italy and Canada. The exhibition is in fact dedicated to the village of Frattura Vecchia, in Abruzzo, Italy, which on 13 January 1915 was devastated by a violent earthquake in which women, children and the elderly (more than a hundred) died: husbands and fathers were not there or because emigrated to Canada and because they were far from the village due to transhumance, an ancient tradition – which in this area of Abruzzo, where winters are very harsh, still resists today – which saw the shepherds move their flocks south, towards other more temperate areas for the winter, mainly in Puglia, to allow cattle and sheep to graze on non-frozen ground.
Well, in that village – never rebuilt at that point, a strongly seismic area – everything remained, for over a hundred years, on January 13, 1915. And Cindi’s eye immortalized everything, once more: the interiors of houses with beds, blankets, clothes, pots on the stove and bottles of wine on the table: scenes of lives broken in a few moments and left “frozen” as in a time capsule (below, one of the photographs in exhibition).
The success of the exhibition was such that in mid-June the Luiss University of Rome will organize a webinar to interview Cindi on the relationship between the stories of migration from remote rural communities in central and southern Italy, the persistence of the Italian traditional heritage and the national identity.
The exhibition, organized under the patronage of the Italian Cultural Institute of Toronto and the Canadian Embassy in Italy, is part of the 25th edition of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, Toronto, Canada, which has been extended until December 2021.
Here is another link to the exhibition, through the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival catalog: https://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/exhibition/cindi-emond-for-all-the-i-love-yous-we-forgot-to-say/
For more information on the artist (pictured below): www.cindiemondphotography.com
