I Materani

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve finally made my first zine, I Materani! The zine is the culmination of a journey of exploration, both of my city and of my photography. It is a journey of reconciliation with a city I’ve always experienced only halfway, but it’s also a journey of discovery of what this city is today and how the people of Matera relate to the environment around them.

Without going on too long, I’ll leave you with the introduction to the zine.

I Materani

What does it mean to be materano? I don’t think I’ve ever truly understood it. When I was a child, people used to say that “you can only really call yourself materano if you’ve eaten focaccia from Paoluccio and stroked Gino Millelire’s head.” Of the two, I’ve only done the first.

I grew up in the Sassi, in a sort of in-between era. They weren’t yet overrun by tourists, but they weren’t the ones described by Carlo Levi either. They were being reborn, slowly redeveloped. My grandmother didn’t believe it: “I’ll never come visit you at home, it’s disgusting there,” she used to say to my father after he bought the house.

I think it was the Sassi themselves that sparked my passion for photography: when you live surrounded by so much beauty, sooner or later art finds its way inside you.

My relationship with Matera has always been one of love and hate. I couldn’t wait to leave. I imagined living in Belgium, where my mother is from: summers aren’t suffocating there, and you’re at the center of the continent—everything is close, and opportunities seem endless.

Here, instead, things seem motionless. Everyone obsessed with the Festa della Bruna, which for me as a child meant nothing but inconvenience, barricades, and chaos. And that slowness: in moving, in doing, in changing.

Then I left. And little by little I realized that the lifestyle I criticized so much was, in the end, the only one I truly knew how to live. I can’t rush from a thousand appointments the way you do in Milan. Nor can I keep up with a city like Bologna, which is constantly changing yet never loses its soul: there you feel that things are moving, even if you don’t always know where they’re taking you.

And every year, coming back for the Festa della Bruna, I would see all my friends again, even those who lived far away: like an unwritten appointment, respected by everyone.

With this zine, I’d like to finally make peace with this city. I want to explore the bond—which I believe still exists—between the people of Matera and the Sassi, even though today almost everyone has moved out to make room for B&Bs.

I don’t want the Sassi to become just a postcard, another Venice, another Disneyland.

And above all, I want to understand how it’s possible to love a city that constantly pushes you to leave, but then never truly lets you go.

The zine

If this introduction has sparked your interest, you can write to me on Instagram or on Telegram to receive a copy.