PAESAGGI RECORDS is a record label based between Amsterdam, Berlin and Tuscany, Italy.

 

The first time I disembarked in Alicudi was in 1989, when my father bought a small house in the tiny hamlet called "La Tonna", 100 meters above sea level and he decided that we would spend our summer holidays there. I was only 15 years old and I remember that the island scared me; I wanted to escape from that place because it was too strong and full of the immense and mysterious force of Nature. The sea, the sun, the sky, the wind, the clouds, the strange and apparently hostile faces, the harsh and hard faces of a wild and almost timeless life, made me feel a stranger and far away.
Alicudi is in fact the only island in the Aeolian archipelago without, even now, roads and cars, where there are only mule tracks made of steep and tiring steps. Electric light arrived in 1990 and shortly before the new pier was built which allows daily connection with the rest of Italy. Nanni Moretti himself, in Caro Diario (1993), shows Alicudi as the island without television, from which it is better to escape with no looking back.
Now I can no longer do without his poetry, his simplicity and his Music.
In these years of visits and more or less long stays, I have learned to appreciate, respect and love its magic, its strength, the volcano, the breathtaking landscape and the islanders, this small community of people, full of faces marked by time and life.
The photographic work is a work in progress in the years of my life and portrays both the sunny, summer, bright and worldly part and the winter and wild, dark and deep one. It tells the story of the island through a series of photographs of the landscape that marks the time of the heat and the "cura sui" and its primordial elements: the sea, the sky, the rocks, the vegetation, the stars, the moon, the night.
It is my kaleidoscope of memories. This set of things that vary and change, fragments accumulated throughout history, quiet and silence, in an appropriate Soundtrack.
My photography develops hand in hand the technical and poetic aspects, the theoretical reflection and the practical realization, the depth of the view and its empathic dimension. Starting from the use of the 35 mm. (with an Olympus compact camera first and with my Nikon then) I arrived at the Mamiya 7-II, 6x7, passing through an old 50s Rolleiflex 6x6 of my grandpa.

Manu Archeo.

"In Love you don't feel right; you are not afraid of anything. In Love you feel inebriated with Freedom; you have the impression of being able to embrace the whole world and it seems to us that the whole world embraces us".
Tiziano Terzani - Un Altro Giro Di Giostra (2004).

 

 

Executive Producer: Paesaggi Records

Compiled by Manu Archeo
Mastered by Paesaggi Records
Artwork by Paesaggi Records
Photos and Liner Notes by Manu Archeo