Matteo Capone
PCCB
30 January - 5 February 2023



In central Italy, on the border between the regions of Lazio and Umbria, between Lake Bolsena and the Tiber Valley, there is an area of 6197 hectares called “Paesaggio Culturale di Civita di Bagnoregio (PCCB)”. This area is one of the main nominations for Unesco Site of 2022 in the specific category Cultural Landscapes. It includes six municipalities belonging to the province of Viterbo (VT): Civita di Bagnoregio, Bagnoregio, Lubriano, Civitella d’Agliano, Castiglione in Teverina and Graffignano.

This territory is located in the Valle dei Calanchi, a vast area of clayey rock formed over time by the erosion of the rains, and it's characterized by an intense geomorphological activity (landslides, seismic events, erosion) which makes the landscape particularly fragile and contributes to a gradual depopulation process. Indeed, according to Istat data, between 1961 and 2021 the population decreased on average by 25%, reaching an extreme peak of 96.33% if we consider only the small fraction of Civita di Bagnoregio. The latter, due to its unstable natural characteristics, was defined in 1967 by the writer Bonaventura Tecchi as “La città che muore”. In the last fifty years the number of its inhabitants has dropped drastically, indeed in 2022 only eleven people populate Civita.

Despite these villages continue to be researched destinations because they're realities experienced as an era far from contemporaneity and suspended in time. With the candidacy for Unesco heritage the concept of time is questioned: the past helps to reflect on the cultural and historical importance of these municipalities while the present gives an idea of the relationship between absence and presence of the human figure. These aspects manifest themselves in the landscape in the form of lived human traces to be traveled slowly towards new horizons and a possible future for a place that doesn't want to lose its identity.



Matteo Capone was born in Rome in 1997.

Contemporary author who uses detail, landscape and documentary photography as artistic expression and visual language. He is mainly focused on current and social issues in which the environment is the protagonist. This one is intended as a place where relations between territory and human activity emerge.

Indeed, his visual research begins with a project on the Italian industrial landscape, compromised and wounded in the course of history by human actions. Subsequently the landscape investigation turns on geomorphological questions and their resulting effects. An example is the depopulation of small villages, in which the relationship between absence and human presence manifests itself in the form of lived traces. Currently he's been covering positive industrial issues, where work, choices and solutions are based on circular economy and sustainability.

The interest in the territory born from the need to slow down, pause and immerse himself in contexts that fill a sense of emptiness and personal inadequacy. He was born and he's been growing up in a complicated historical period where the climate emergency creates, especially in young people, an anxiety to live with. His generation and subsequent generations are quite into this topic and, as a photographer, he feels the duty and desire to make a contribution.

In 2020 he graduated in Photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Rome. In 2021 he started one year of Fellowship with ParalleloZero photojournalism agency (Milan). In 2022 he attended the Contemporary Photojournalism Master's degree at Officine Fotografiche (Rome) and he was selected by Fondazione Studio Marangoni (Florence) for a workshop curated by Michele Borzoni, TerraProject. In the same year he was chosen by Leica Camera Italia for the Roma ChilometroZero project. A selection of his main recognition includes: collective exhibitions in MAXXI, FSM Gallery, Fotofestival Lenzburg, Photometria Festival, FotoLeggendo, Green&Blue Festival, PH21 Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, Kommunale Galerie, Trieste Photo Days, Sifest, Forum Austriaco di Cultura; finalist of ISPA 2022, winner of the Photometria Awards 2022, honorable mention of the International Photography Awards 2021, finalist of the BUP Book Awards 2021, special mention of the Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021; publications on National Geographic Italia, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Eki Magazine, Perimetro, Phroom, Landscape Stories and other magazines.