Sara Carletti: «With photography I give voice and memory to abandoned places»

The photographer from Perugia has created a photo book (La voce dell’abbandono) in which she documents four forgotten places in the province of Perugia.

Abandoned places, old buildings eaten away by nature or ruins forgotten and hidden from the public. Urban Exploration (literally urban exploration) – very fashionable in the world for some time now – searches for these fascinating and adrenaline-filled places (castles, churches, factories, hospitals, hotels, military structures, tunnels, entire villages and ghost towns) to bring them back to life also through videos or photographs.

 

Centrale Termoelettrica. Foto di Sara Carletti

This is what Sara Carletti, a photographer from Perugia who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, achieved in her first book, La voce dell’abbandono (Midgard Editrice). She has brought back to life, with her shots, four forgotten places in the province of Perugia: the Schifanoia Castle (Valfabbrica), the Church of San Bartolomeo dei Fossi (Umbertide), the Thermoelectric Power Plant (Piegaro) and Borgo Biselli (Norcia).

Sara Carletti

“These are places that have their own voice (hence the title of the book) even though when you enter inside you only hear silence; they speak to you and investigating them allowed me to make them visible and give them a soul again. Photography is memory and I liked the idea of ​​saving their memory in some way, before they were destroyed or devoured by vegetation. Bringing them back to life, not only through the ruins, but also thanks to the objects I found inside them: in telling their story, in fact, I focused on the details. I believe that in this way the history of a place is better conveyed” explains Sara.

His passion for photographing abandoned places, like a modern Indiana Jones, began when he was attending the Academy of Fine Arts then, over time, he developed the idea of ​​creating a book of images to tell the stories behind forgotten and neglected places.

Castello di Schifanoia (Valfabbrica). Foto di Sara Carletti

After having researched, she ventured into the exploration – often a little disturbing (she confesses) – of these old buildings, also to encourage the Municipalities involved in their recovery and restoration. “I would like the book to serve this purpose too. The Schifanoia Castle is enormous and, inside, it has beautiful frescoes and a church: you can really breathe its history. In the Piegaro power plant, on the other hand, I found many photos, computer disks, cassettes and various materials that could be recovered to create, why not, a museum” suggests Carletti.