Our landscapes are altered and in these alterations we see the character of the inhabitants, in this way, landscapes are symbolic texts that attest to a way of living. Sicily is a palimpsest, a text constantly re-written, new over old, until the words can no longer be distinguished. The result is a language nobody understands, but order and identity can be found in photographs; when the solid matter of man’s intervention is transformed into a weightless image, a tableaux is sublimated from the land. These photographs are a journey. Hard to read, like the landscapes in them, they trace pathways, actions and objects, charting a course through myriad destructions. Humans are present only in their artefacts; relics of past and present, concrete inhabited by dogs.There is something to learn here, but we are unsure what, regardless each photograph tells us something unique, together they make a place to reflect on a landscape and our actions within it.

Text by Sam Laughlin

All images ©Pietro Motisi