The photos of Claudio Barontini, an homage to the Cinque Terre. by Annalisa Nicastro

Annalisa Nicastro

by Annalisa Nicastro

Among the vineyards that Francesco Petrarca describes illuminated by the sun and favored by Bacchus, the Eugenio Montale and Cinque Terre Literary Park was established in 2015, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A tribute from the Cinque Terre National Park, Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore to one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Claudio Barontini is a professional photographer with numerous collaborations with national and international magazine, known for his photographic portraits of famous people and for his original reportages. In his photographic book Cinque Terre, i giorni della vendemmia he pays homage to a centuries-old wine landscape which, even today, continues to play a crucial socio-economic role in the life of the local community. His black and white shots capture landscapes but above all the gestures of the Cinque Terre winemakers at work during the vertical grape harvest, in which the moods of the soil mix with the age-old peasant toil.

Here many wines are also produced, among them is the precious Sciacchetrà passito of which Eugenio Montale wrote "the classic type, drunk on the spot, authentic, one hundred percent, far exceeds that pharmaceutical port wine"; the passito also loved by other writers as recalled by the words of Stanislao de Marsanich, President of the Literary Parks, in the preface to Barontini's book: "The bunches await you for" that sciacchetrà that is pressed in the five leafy lands "(Gabriele d ' Annunzio); elevated to the essence of all Dionysian intoxications by Giosuè Carducci, it was requested in a few bottles by Giovanni Pascoli "in the name of Italian literature".

Claudio, you are a great photographer, a refined portraitist of famous people with publications in the most important periodicals, I have also seen that you are a musician. How has music influenced your becoming a photographer?
I always say: “I became a photographer because I wanted to be a musician”. I bought the first SLR in 1973, when I joined the orchestra of singer Milva to play bass. I was 19 and with her, for about eight years, I took part in concerts in theaters and clubs all over the world ... including the legendary Madison Square Garden in New York. Just in that period I picked up my first camera, with which I began to shoot and tell everything I encountered and it seemed beautiful. In short, a kind of image diary to look at at home, at the end of the tour. When I stopped playing with Milva, despite having other calls from bands and singers, I only continued with photography. I can say that I also started that new adventure well because my first national report came out on “L'Europeo”. From that moment on I continued with my photographic journey.

"Cinque Terre, i giorni della vendemmia" is your photographic book created to pay homage to the twenty years (1999-2019) of the Cinque Terre National Park which is a World Heritage Site. How did you accept the proposal to document the Cinque Terre of wine today?
I have always had the desire to tell the Cinque Terre; but not the landscapes, true icons for tourist books and calendars. What interested me was the daily life of those who live and work there. I had been thinking about it for thirty years but I have always put it off both for the very long time that this undertaking would have taken me away and for the logistical and organizational difficulties. Probably if this opportunity had not come, I would have given up.

In 2015 the Eugenio Montale and Cinque Terre Literary Park was also born. Have you chosen to put a selection of Ossi di Seppia to accompany your photos?
Yes, because of my way of “telling” a territory I find it unnatural not to think about those who historically did it before me, with other artistic forms. Eugenio Montale did it with poetry, but I could also add some painters including the "Macchiaiolo" Telemaco Signorini. For this idea that I immediately accepted, I must actually thank Patrizio Scarpellini, director of the Cinque Terre National Park, who in turn proposed it to Stanislao de Marsanich, president of the Literary Parks; it was the latter who wisely selected the lines from "Ossi di Seppia" by the poet Eugenio Montale.

You have chosen a black and white for your shots. Is there a specific reason?
I was born with black and white and, even if I shoot in color for magazines, I always use this formula for my works, books or exhibitions. I feel the BN more, it is intimate, it does not distract the reading. “The color subtracts, the B / W adds”, as Vittorio Sgarbi said at the presentation of one of my exhibitions.

In the book there are portraits of people who work the land daily, but not only. Did you want to make a choral story in pictures? What kind of local community does it come up with?
I hope that what was the initial objective of the book comes out, that is to pay homage to a "community" of winemakers, people who with effort and great seriousness, in addition to producing excellent wine (how can we forget the Sciacchetrà) are custodians of biodiversity and historic “dry stone walls”, typical of this Ligurian landscape. Without the winegrowers, perhaps, this important cultural and historical heritage would have already collapsed into the sea.

In your shots there are people, landscapes, places. What kind of photographic storytelling did you use? In what daily moments did you want to catch them?  What kind of landscape emerges?
For the narration, I chose to go beyond any logic of a single village or winery, preferring to describe the Cinque Terre as a unique territory. I had no choice, both for the time and for the days to photograph. Winegrowers are farmers and not "actors", as a winemaker pointed out to me. If you want to photograph them you have to go when they decide and you can't afford to delay two minutes because they don't wait for you and don't take you to the vineyards. It is, therefore, a story lived among the vineyards and dry stone walls, dwelling on the ancient operations of hoeing, tying the vines with broom, leafing up to the harvest and the final "chapter" of winemaking in the cellars. An empathic "landscape" made up of portraits, gestures, details and sensations.

You said that “Every story I photograph becomes part of mine”, what has remained inside you more than anything else here in the Cinque Terre?
Three months of appointments at five in the morning and endless walks along narrow paths overlooking the sea. Now, when I return to the Cinque Terre, I have another approach to the territory. I feel almost at home.

In your photos in this book you have given space to the present, the past but also the future ...
I believe that the Cinque Terre, where viticulture has been practiced vertically for centuries, are still very tied to tradition, and always will be. There are no tractors that pass between the wide rows, to facilitate the work. Here it is really hard, as it once was. Here in the photos I took, past, present and future seem to almost match, to remain suspended in a unique and timeless dimension. 

Annalisa Nicastro

She is ParkTime Magazine's editor in chief. She founded the online music magazine SOund36 which she has been running for 13 years. 
She speaks German, English, French and Dutch, after graduating in Foreign Languages ​​and Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome, she began traveling and arrived in Berlin as a correspondent for ANSA.  She has written in numerous publications including Alitalia's Ulysses and Leggere:Tutti, of which she was in the past editor in chief. She believes, always and again, in the value of people, of the word and that a piece of paper can create a (new) World.