It is with great commotion that I want to share this text with you. A testimony of the strong bond between Giorgio Bocca and our Hills, a bond born at the time of the War of Resistance and strenghtened during the following years.
The text is a preface to a photography book that, sadly, I’ve now lost, and even if I have noted down this quote from Bocca, I can’t remember the bibliographic details (title and editor).
The hills and men of the Langa, strengthen my conviction that here nature reveals its arcane indifference to or miserable lives, giving the men who live and work there just enough madness to survive.
Being accustomed, like an inhabitant of the mountains, to stand with my shoulders covered, looking at the same, limited are of the world – always the same mountains, the same villages, the same snow – every time I go down into the Langa I feel light-headed.
It is in the Langa, rather than by the sea, that you are aware that the world is round, that you can see hundreds of church towers, the endless, undulating vineyards, the low skies full of clouds or bright blue, stretching into the curvature of this sphere that hurries, goodness knows why, into the sidereal emptiness, taking us with it.
There is something inside it, like a sort of radiation, peculiar humours that make everything here stronger, unique, whether it is a truffle or a toma cheese, game or wine, the air or colours. To fix these arcane powers in photographs takes a great deal of love, and a great deal of work.
Giorgio Bocca