nostalghia
I went to the 15th-century village of Bagno Vignoni, in the Sienna province of Tuscany, to take pictures where Andrei Tarkovsky shot the film Nostalghia in the early ’80s. Tarkovsky went to Tuscany with the poet and screenwriter Tonino Guerra to find a place to shoot the film. Guerra later said that when they arrived in Bagno Vignoni, Tarkovsky was so moved by the sight of the thermal bath in which Saint Catherine is said to have bathed that he decided to shoot the film in this mythical place.
I photographed another place seen in the film, the Saint Galgano Abbey, about an hour’s drive from Bagno Vignoni. Now that its roof is gone the ancient abbey seems like a temple ruin laid bare to the surrounding nature, open to the sky, with an aura of mystery. But for believers it’s still a house of God.
I was interested in the repetition of the architecture and I experienced a strong sense of déjà-vu. These empty spaces are the material of memory, open to narrations possible to imagine but which never quite develop.
[Table of contents]
night pictures
night pictures by Olivier Zahm with a portfolio by Ron Galella
by Olivier Zahm
by Alex Israel
by Rachel Chandler
Noritoshi Hirakawa
by Sabine Heller
by Alex Israel
by Olivier Zahm
by Matt Sweeney
by Kazumi Asamura Hayashi
by Olivier Zahm
by Marcelo krasilcic
by Dominique Isserman
by Stacey Mark
by Camille Bidault Waddington
by Olivier Zahm
by Martien Mulder
by Steven Klein
by Magnus Unnar
by Theo Wenner
by Olivier Zahm
by Glenn O'Brien
by Lola Schnabel
by Olivier Amsellem