A Family Album

It could be the appeal of “black/white” snapshots, the patina of age or the atmosphere inherent in the surroundings, but whatever it is the Alinari Archive photos in this catalogue have an air of familiarity to them. The places pictured come from every corner of the Mediterranean basin yet there is an alikeness to them that is almost an intuitive and simple confirmation of the concept of Mare Nostrum, of “our sea”.

It is hard to believe that the deep-seated signs of the basic affinity shared by peoples and countries we look upon today as different can surface anew in not much more than a hundred years, and often much less. All one has to do is eliminate the most evident signs of modernity: skyscrapers, great highways, automobiles, advertisements, everything that serves to identify our recent past and our hard-won identity to let the land, the stones, the skies, the seas, mutually refer to and call each other, speak the same language. To say nothing of the faces and the eyes right there, just around the corner, so like each other in their artlessness, no matter where they come from.

Looking at a photo of the city of Rhodes it might just as well be Istanbul. Palermo and Nice, as they were then, seem much closer; and Castel dell’Ovo in Naples might easily be standing next to Fort St. Angelo in Malta. Without the city that besieges modern Athens, the ruins of the Parthenon have the same enchanted silence of Petra in Jordan or Palmyra in Syria. The courtyards of a building in Beirut and of one in Damascus seem to be contiguous and superimposed. It passing through the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem it would not be surprising to find oneself in an Algerian street.

This is what the pictures tell our instincts, although logic with its knowledge of history says that things are often not at all what they seem.

And yet, the closer one comes to the roots, the more one realizes that there must have been a moment, for Europe, for the Arab world, for the Jewish world, for the Balkans, in which being divided or even enemies was not an ineluctable condemnation. And it might even help us believe that even today things might be different.

It is not a matter of summoning up the rather timeworn rhetoric of the Mediterranean “cradle of civilization”. It was that once, but these are sorrowful times in which even the cradle offers no protection from madness and violence. We can only try to discover anew the reserves of that vein of knowledge, of comparison, of respect that once brought the various shores of this sea together. True, they were never peaceful shores: wars, rivalries, blood, migrations are the other aspect of this “ Mare Nostrum”. But a network of contacts, of commerce, of trade, of travelers (or possibly only tourists), has continued unbroken through the centuries, ignoring race, religion or banner, a network that is made of life itself.

This is the life that the photographic masterpieces in this catalogue have so masterfully called up. Leafing through these pages is almost like leafing through a family album. And as with all families, especially the older and more numerous ones, every so often there have to be reunions, where differences can be reconciled, common memories shared, where all can learn to know each other better. And it is this in particular – remembering, knowing, bringing together – that the exhibition organized by ANSA med in collaboration with the Senate hopes to accomplish.