Photography & Digital ArtAUG 17, 2023

Documenting Monopoli: 10 Summers Captured In 30 Photos By Me

Monopoli is a beautiful town and municipality in Italy, in the metropolitan city of Bari and region of Apulia. For me Monopoli, the birthplace of my mother and my grandparents, is a city of sea and sun, of love, of memories. I go to Monopoli every summer for a while, and I always have mixed feelings.

Walking through the streets of Monopoli awakens in me memories long covered by the sheet of the past, but never erased from memory. However, the Monopoli that I live in now, every summer, is so different that in some moments I find it hard to believe that it is the same place, the same streets, the same stones, the same sea. Yet the faces are the same, perhaps the hair is less and a little grayer, but the laughter, the hugs, and the stories of friends are constantly there to remind me of that magical time when our anxieties were so naïve as to awaken now a vague tenderness.

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#1

Documenting Monopoli: 10 Summers Captured In 30 Photos By Me

38points

Who, at that time, was not looking for a place in the world? Who, today, does not feel that they have more or less found their rightful place? And when I think back to the most special days of my adolescence, don’t I think about this city? Isn’t this where I bought my first CD, or suffered the first pains of love? Isn’t it here that I discovered the various facets of the word “friendship”, that I learned about the sea and melancholy?

#2

27points

#3

25points

There have been summers in which I escaped from Monopoli, others instead that I wished would never end. Sometimes I went away smiling, other times the train took away my farewell tears. I loved this city, I hated it. I had a fight with it, I made peace with it, I was bored but also had fun like never before. I’ve tried cold sweats, hot tears, ice cold beers, warm waves. And every time I left, I brought with me something less irrational than a simple memory.

#4

25points

#5

22points

Here, where the roots of my family and of my own life swim, I still rediscover the pleasure of vacation, not travel, the only place where I allow these two words to coincide. In this series of pictures I tried, with my street photography, to capture the vibes of the summer that every year I spend in this city, through its daily life, its local people and its visitors, its colors. Monopoli is beautiful, a lot, and I really love it.