Italian Elegy chapter 1: the Lausian plain
This work is the first chapter of Italian Elegies, a long-term photographic project that explores Italian landscapes as territories of sacrifice lands politically chosen to sustain the growth of major metropolitan areas such as Milan, Rome, Turin, and Naples, and subjected to extractivist models that drained their resources and altered their balance. Marked by the dual scars of nuclear legacy and climate change, these fragile environments embody the paradox of abundance and vulnerability: once symbols of fertility and modern progress, today they reveal the unresolved costs of energy ambitions, intensive agriculture, and extreme weather. More than three decades after the 1987 referendum that ended nuclear power in Italy, the landscapes that hosted those projects still carry silent wounds, while climate change exacerbates their fragility with increasing droughts, floods, and instability.
Within this perspective, the Lausian Plain, a stretch of the Po Valley around Lodi, historically subordinated to serve the metropolitan ambition of Milan, becomes both a case study and a symbol. For thousands of years, this land has been shape by human intervention: its vast canal system, stretching over 2,500 kilometers, created fertile soils and a resilient cultural model. Agriculture and water management have defined its identity and sustained its communities. Yet industrial development, agricultural intensification, and the nearby presence of nuclear infrastructures such as the Caorso plant have profoundly altered the balance of this territory. Once molded to guarantee abundance and to feed the metropolis, the plain now stands at the intersection of environmental stress and historical memory.
According to research promoted by Italy for Climate, the availability of water in the country has dropped by 20% in recent years and could reach 40% in the coming decades due to global warming, with southern regions facing peaks of up to 90%. Italy, ranking third in Europe with 130 billion cubic meters of water annually, faces the highest water stress on the continent, surpassing France and Germany in withdrawals. In 2022, a severe drought in northern Italy highlighted the accelerating impact of climate change on both ecosystems and social life. Agriculture remains the main source of water demand: OECD data (2021) shows that it accounts for 69% of withdrawals worldwide, and 41% in Italy, second only to Spain in Europe. Against this backdrop, Lausian Plain reflects on the fragility of a landscape shaped by centuries of hydraulic adaptation, intensive farming, and energy exploitation. It questions how progress, whether through canals, monocultures, or nuclear power has left behind scars that define today’s precarious ba- lance between survival and depletion.
The work is conceived as the opening chapter of Italian Elegies, a larger meditation on Italian territories where history, environment, and society intertwine under the weight of modernity’s contradictions. The following chapter, Etruscopolis, From the Adda to the Tyrrhenian, extends this reflection to the Lazio coast, historically linked to the metropolitan area of Rome, where abandoned nuclear projects, industrial infrastructures, and rural traditions coexist in tension. Future chapters will address other sacrificed territories connected to metropolitan centers such as Turin and Naples.
Together, these elegies create a national narrative with global resonance, portraying landscapes caught between memory and transformation and communities who endure as custodians of land and resilience in times of ecological crisis in lands offered to metropolitan desires, where sacrifice and survival remain intertwined.
Within this perspective, the Lausian Plain, a stretch of the Po Valley around Lodi, historically subordinated to serve the metropolitan ambition of Milan, becomes both a case study and a symbol. For thousands of years, this land has been shape by human intervention: its vast canal system, stretching over 2,500 kilometers, created fertile soils and a resilient cultural model. Agriculture and water management have defined its identity and sustained its communities. Yet industrial development, agricultural intensification, and the nearby presence of nuclear infrastructures such as the Caorso plant have profoundly altered the balance of this territory. Once molded to guarantee abundance and to feed the metropolis, the plain now stands at the intersection of environmental stress and historical memory.
According to research promoted by Italy for Climate, the availability of water in the country has dropped by 20% in recent years and could reach 40% in the coming decades due to global warming, with southern regions facing peaks of up to 90%. Italy, ranking third in Europe with 130 billion cubic meters of water annually, faces the highest water stress on the continent, surpassing France and Germany in withdrawals. In 2022, a severe drought in northern Italy highlighted the accelerating impact of climate change on both ecosystems and social life. Agriculture remains the main source of water demand: OECD data (2021) shows that it accounts for 69% of withdrawals worldwide, and 41% in Italy, second only to Spain in Europe. Against this backdrop, Lausian Plain reflects on the fragility of a landscape shaped by centuries of hydraulic adaptation, intensive farming, and energy exploitation. It questions how progress, whether through canals, monocultures, or nuclear power has left behind scars that define today’s precarious ba- lance between survival and depletion.
The work is conceived as the opening chapter of Italian Elegies, a larger meditation on Italian territories where history, environment, and society intertwine under the weight of modernity’s contradictions. The following chapter, Etruscopolis, From the Adda to the Tyrrhenian, extends this reflection to the Lazio coast, historically linked to the metropolitan area of Rome, where abandoned nuclear projects, industrial infrastructures, and rural traditions coexist in tension. Future chapters will address other sacrificed territories connected to metropolitan centers such as Turin and Naples.
Together, these elegies create a national narrative with global resonance, portraying landscapes caught between memory and transformation and communities who endure as custodians of land and resilience in times of ecological crisis in lands offered to metropolitan desires, where sacrifice and survival remain intertwined.
