Il tempo della nocciola Enzo Massa tells the story of Langhe through photography

In the hills of Alta Langa, the hazelnut is not just an agricultural product: it’s a shared element, like a rhythm that marks the seasons, but also a heritage that passes from hand to hand, like a precious gift.

It’s from this deep awareness that the work of Enzo Massa is born, a photographer who has been able to transform the “tonda gentile” into a visual story capable of touching intimate yet universal chords.

These days, the deconsecrated chapel of Albaretto della Torre hosts his photography exhibition, a journey that doesn’t just display, but invites you to enter a world where the hazelnut is told as a symbol and a companion of human journey.

Who is Enzo Massa

Behind every image on display is the gaze of Enzo Massa, an amateur photographer from Alba with over forty years of experience.

Massa’s work doesn’t seek sensationalism: it seeks truth, the one hidden in details and daily gestures that characterize the landscapes.

His journey begins in 1981, when he buys his first camera with his first salary as a Ferrero employee: a simple gesture, but full of meaning, that marks the beginning of a deep and lasting passion.

Since then, Massa has cultivated his love for photography like one cultivates a hazelnut grove: with patience, dedication and respect.

He was President of the Alba Photography Group, participated in numerous competitions, won awards and continued to engage with authors from around the world, enriching his technical and emotional background.

His work doesn’t seek sensationalism: it seeks truth, the one hidden in details and daily gestures that characterize the landscapes. And, through the hazelnut, he has found a way to tell their story.

The hazelnut as a journey

Massa’s photography project, collected in complete form in the volume Hazelnut Time, is born from years of walking among hazelnut groves, observing the people who live them and patiently waiting for the changes of nature.

The hazelnut has changed the destiny of entire families, has allowed them to build but also to imagine a possible future, providing work and continuity.

The hazelnut, obviously, is the absolute protagonist: you see it born as a timid sprout, grow among the leaves, ripen under the sun, fall to the ground until it reaches the hands of man: each phase is told with delicacy, as if the photographer wanted to give not just an image, but also make us immerse ourselves in its natural realization.

In these hills, it’s important to remember that the hazelnut has changed the destiny of entire families, has allowed them to build but also to imagine a possible future, providing work and continuity.

And Massa tells it without rhetoric, letting the faces, gestures, wrinkles and hands speak.

A fruit that becomes a spiritual symbol

One of the most surprising aspects of the exhibition journey is the spiritual dimension: Massa captures the hazelnut also as a ritual object – of peasant origin – transformed into rosary beads, as a symbol of devotion, as a bridge between earth and sacred.

The confraternities, religious festivals, community traditions thus become an integral part of the story.

The hazelnut is celebrated and preserved through the centuries, shaping the identity of a community that has been able to transform a fruit into a cultural heritage.

An exhibition that is an invitation to return to the land

Precisely because of this factor of union between sacred and profane, the exhibition could only be hosted in the deconsecrated chapel of Albaretto della Torre, the beating heart of SensoVia, a place capable of slowing down time and where light filters like a caress, enhancing the works on display.

The photographs don’t ask to be looked at quickly: they invite you to pause and let yourself be immersed in the experience and scent of the countryside, creating first curiosity and then connection.

Enzo Massa’s love for the hazelnut goes beyond photography: it’s an act of giving back to a land that has been able to transform a small fruit into a symbol of identity and beauty.

Those who leave the Chapel of Albaretto della Torre will carry with them a fragment of Langa and a memory that smells of this small seed of gratitude.