“Nonsolopuntaperotti4”. Interview with the Jury President Marcello Saponaro

by Letizia Palmisano

Starts NonSoloPuntaPerotti fourth edition, an italian photo contest created to denounce the “eco-monsters” in Lombardy (Italy), but extended throughout Italy for two years. Tell us something about.
«Born from Punta Perotti, the Apulian eco-monsters blasted with explosives, and from the idea that all eco-monsters that disfigure the Italian scenery deserve the same fate. It’s a game but I think also has a pedagogical value: the people (young and not) that participating, say with each picture to legions of assessors, architects and public officials that the landscape is part of the social, cultural and corporate capital of Italy and must be enhanced, not destroyed».

Any news in the IV edition?
«Meanwhile this edition is national. Like the previous of the rest. And then we have expanded to every digital image or scanned one denouncing urban or architectural havoc. So it is no longer limited only to photographs taken by mobile phone. The important thing is to capture the eco-monsters and report them».

The jury, which you chair, will be made up by who else?
«By historical components Guido Pollice (National President Verdi Ambiente and Società Onlus) and Fabio Fimiani (Journalist of Radio Popolare), by photographers like Fabio Treves and Silvia Tenenti; communication experts and journalists like Luca Conti (Consultant for Social Media) Massimo Mantellini (journalist and blogger), Edoardo Raspelli (Lead televised), Cristina Gabetti (journalist and writer). Edoardo Stoppa (personage tv of “Striscia la Notizia” for animals and ecology), Nicola Mattina (ICT Consultant), academics like Walter Fornasa, (Professor, University of Bergamo) and the business with Angelo Naj Oleari (Entrepreneur in the production and distribution sector of food and textile)».

You are at the fourth edition. What results did you get so far?
«Some buildings have been slaughtered. I am proud because I think a bit of merit it is of our contest also. I refer, for example, at the famous Hotel in Milan built for the World Cup in Zingonia, the one with shaped of " hair dryer". Who lives in Bergamo knows what needs to be reclassified Zingonia area... this is the quality of life goes from there, from the knocking down of the bad. Starting with the ugly. And its reconstruction».

Extension to national level means, up to now and last year, to a national participation? What are the most photographed subjects? There is a "prototype of eco-monsters" immortalized more frequently?
«Yes, the images come from all over Italy and I think that each type of eco-monster has been immortalized: from the industrial skeleton to the houses too "imaginative", from the unfinished bridge to the pouring of concrete. The prototype does not exist, there is a scale of ugliness it sees definitely at the top the abandoned buildings that are increasingly left to decay in our cities, become places of insecurity and deprivation».

In the last two years, other very similar photo contests were born. Do you feel inspired or "stolen"?
«I am sincerely pleased that major newspapers and big associations have sponsored similar initiative. None of us will succeed to win the battle, cultural rather than political, for the beauty alone. I wish that the schools did promoters of similar initiatives and call the public works assessor of the area to chair the jury! Unfortunately, only if and when they will not no longer necessary denounce it will mean we have understood that enhance our territory is our primary economic interest as well as ecological».