Sardinia's centenarians in the photographs of Luigi Corda: the exhibition in Milan

In Milan, SpazioRaw, in collaboration with the Bìfoto Festival of Photography in Sardinia, presents photographer Luigi Corda ’s (Cagliari, 1979) solo exhibition on Sardinian centenarians. The exhibition is presented in Milan and included in the program at the 2020 edition of the Festival of Photography in Sardinia. It is scheduled from October 9 to 28.

The exhibition is a collection of images from Luigi Corda’s photo book 100 Centenari, a collection of portraits of the witnesses of an era, which has known wars, great discoveries and illustrious men. A project that through the portraits of one hundred Sardinian centenarians tells of the changes to which man was subjected in the 20th century. A journey that reveals the identities, habits, and stories of one hundred of the people who contributed to our history. In search of that common thread that seeks to explain what is the recipe for making it to a hundred.

The close up portraits in black and white, try to reveal through a glance, a smile, a gesture, the identity of the centenarian. The privileged land where the photographic account took place, Sardinia, is a very special genetic park that has been subjected to international research and studies for years. Indeed, the extraordinary cases of longevity in recent years have drawn scholarly attention to the island, which has once again become an observatory of choice for scientists, geneticists and biodemographers.

100 Centenarians is a thoughtful and curious work, an essay that draws attention to senility and leads to reflection on the life of the elderly centenarian and supercentenarian (about 110 years old), a social snapshot drawn with an anthropological gaze of great tenderness. But if longevity unites these men, who have lived at the turn of the century, it is also true that there is no identikit of the centenarian: each man is equal only to himself, and it is this singularity, which shines through each portrait, that characterizes the development of this project.

“Their vivid faces,” reads a note, “charged with an expressiveness that the uniqueness of each person’s journey draws and redraws, show us how old age can give a new joy of life, a different poeticity, an unknown dimension of one’s existence, in which the centenarian becomes an asset to the community and the spokesman of ancient values that harmonize with the changes of time. There are those who of time have savored every chime, every change, every delicate nuance, passing through distant eras and becoming a link between cultures and worlds that we could not have known without their testimony. These men and women who crossed and traversed a century of lights and shadows, the twentieth century, to arrive at the new Millennium, becoming extraordinary witnesses of an epochal passage. An era that saw wars, discoveries and innovations, the century in which the world’s population grew most rapidly, the century of great urbanization, the dizzying acceleration of transportation, the exponential multiplication of mass production, and the green revolution in agriculture. A century that in its opening did not know telecommunications and saw the birth of the Internet. A special period, then, that when traversed by an individual in its entirety gives him or her the extraordinary role of observer and chosen witness.”

Most centenarians to date enjoy good health, are alive and continue unabated to move forward.

For all information you can visit SpazioRaw’s official website or Luigi Corda’s official website.

Pictured: Luigi Corda, Ziu Boriccu

Sardinia's centenarians in the photographs of Luigi Corda: the exhibition in Milan

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