Prosféro is a staged photography work born within the Centro di Fotografia Indipendente and resulting from a personal research on topics of anthropological interest such as memory, belonging, daily life and material culture. The project dialogues with the Puntino ad Ago, a particular lace, object of patrimonialization practices, made in the Latronico area, in Basilicata. The work stems from the suggestion of the possible derivation of Puntino from the ancient Greek technique of weaving fishing nets, but it does not exhaust its vision in it, formulating a suspended question: what is the value of this knowledge today?

At the foot of the mountains, in Basilicata, is Latronico, the small town of my origins. I walked through narrow roads and the countryside, through the woods and the houses that seem suspended in time, in search of stories and artifacts. Only in that Lucanian village, in fact, an ancient lace still survives, the Puntino ad Ago. Having arrived there from distant time and place, this technique has changed in forms and uses, so that the weaving of nets as Greek fishermen did in ancient times has changed into the meticulous making of lace. Prosféro, from ancient Greek “handing down”, is the act of understanding and adapting knowledge to the present time. The portraits of the series are the Lucanian faces of girls who wear the clothes of their ancestors lace makers and the scenarios which alternate with the dreamlike vision of a mountain that has been able to be the guardian of the memory of the sea.