Environmental communication with strokes of clicks

by Eleonora Anello

On Saturday December the 4th 2010 at 4:00pm, in Sala Beppe Fenoglio, the Municipal Library on via Vittorio Emanuele II 19, in Alba (North Italy), will inaugurate the photography exhibition “Fotografiamo il Paesaggio” (Photograph the Landscape), which is sponsored by the Observatory for the Protection of the Langhe and Roero Landscapes, a consultation with the participation of the 25 local associations involved in the protection and promotion of the local landscape and environment.

To mark the occasion prominent experts were invited, which included: professor Sergio Conti, from the University of Turin, who will speak on geographical economics; professor Lorenzo Mamino, from the Polytechnic of Turin, who will speak on innovation and tradition, and finally professor Marco De Vecchi, from the University of Turin, who will focus on agriculture and soils. The conference will be preceded by a brief video message from Luca Mercalli illustrating land use.

The 75 photographs in the exhibition expose the landscape changes that have occurred in recent years through two types of images: those that represent the positive elements and those that show the bad that man has done. The initiative will also serve as a monitor, intending to highlight what can sometimes escape a casual glance. «It has been launched by using roughly 200 photographs we received from dozens of photographers who have sought to portray our territory in a good and bad way - explains Silvio Veglio, the President of the Observatory - By putting people in front of these images, we want to involve them personally, by calling them into question and focusing on their emotions, not to mention administrations and schools, and other main targets that we want to address. Our intent is not a complaint, instead we want to set off a debate in our target audience so that the landscape will be reviewed by the public in its various forms and dynamics, given the sudden and profound changes it has felt in recent years».

In this exhibition, environmental communication exploits the peculiarities of iconic messages, especially the immediate transmission of content, giving rise to emotional reactions and subjectivism, stimulating associations, attracting attention, and many more eloquent words.

The exhibition has free admission, and will remain open until December the 14th, while on Saturday the 11th at 9:00pm, there will be a screening of the movie “Il suolo minacciato” (The Threatened Soil), that describes and documents the changes related to the urbanization of the wild that has occurred in recent years due to the changes imposed on the Po Valley by man in respect to housing and production needs.

The sight of these works speaks volumes about the degradation of the landscape not only in aesthetics but also in culture, and the large and immediate threat it poses to the local area’s economy.