39°C. A Forgotten Italian Season


  • Photographer
    Elisabetta Claudio
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2010
  • Technical Info
    Sheet Film 4x5'', 120mm

In an Italy of its shores buried by concrete and of its forests hard bitten too many times by arsons, there is a public space where man and nature are able to connect and be in harmony again: the public thermal baths. The public thermal baths in Italy, popular and well-known since Ancient Rome are situated by unpredictable and sometimes impassable places nowadays bitterly threatened by property speculation and inadequate maintenance services. 39°C provides documentary evidence with the purpose of preserving the traces and history of these natural places across Italy.

Story

In an Italy of its shores buried by concrete and of its forests hard bitten too many times by arsons, there is a public space where man and nature are able to connect and be in harmony again: the public thermal baths.

The public thermal baths in Italy, popular and well-known since Ancient Rome are situated by unpredictable and sometimes impassable places nowadays bitterly threatened by property speculation and inadequate maintenance services.

The Italian public thermal baths preserve traits of vital and wild nature unlike thermal bath resorts where the seeking of one's own psychophysical wellness happens in an environment clearly controlled by mankind.
In these public thermal baths the human being can experience an aspect of life that is fading away, a visceral connection with the environment in which the nature represents the wellness itself.

39°C provides documentary evidence with the purpose of preserving the traces and history of these natural places across Italy.

Public thermal baths lacks of any modern comfort, attended by a down-to-earth mankind that speaks exotic languages and has many children, humble and yet able to appreciate the real well-being.
That same well-being imposed by a nature that carries along no hostility, a warming and certainly welcoming nature.

You can create multiple entries, and pay for them at the same time.
Just go to your History, and select multiple entries that you would like to pay for.