‘A Conflict in Nature’ is a personal exhibition of landscape images by Fivizzano based photographer, Nigel Fawcett, that reflects on the WWII massacre that took place at Vinca in Italy from the 24th – 27th August, 1944. Please note: this exhibition and its associated gallery are now closed but the poem that accompanied the visual elements of the show can be found below …
A Conflict in Nature
(Ghosts of Vinca, August 1944)
Up here, where the lone trees grow, the air is clear and the time is now.
My eyes scan a ring of jagged peaks that cradle a forest. Here and there, the skyline is punctuated by a high mountain pass. The only easy way into this desecrated corner of paradise is by a narrow roadway that twists and turns its way up a deep canyon. It arrives at a place where towering cliffs appear to barricade all further progress. Yet, to one side, the steep flanks of the hillside have yielded to humankind’s persistence. A long series of switchbacks affords access to an airy valley above, where an improbably large village has intruded into what might otherwise have been a wilderness.
All this I survey from up here, where the lone trees grow, and the air is clear and the time is now. But; echoing around the hills, and hanging in the valleys; whispering through the forest, and reflected in the streams; are ghosts from the past. And 162 is their number.
I come here often, where the lone trees grow. A man of the mountains. A man of the wilderness. But this place — this particular place — is a place of conflict.
My journey here brought me through the whispering forest — where my eyes became blurred.
My attention was diverted by a trick of the light that hung in the air of a rock-choked valley — where my eyes became blurred.
I passed ancient hollow chestnut trees and ruined huts — where my eyes became blurred.
I arrived at this place, where the lone trees grow, in search of enlightenment but, as I looked across to that most poignant of mountain passes, nothing became clear.
Throughout those days, wherever I rested my eyes, a nebulous sense of nihilism distorted the scene. Echoes from another time. A conflict in nature.
This land is yet to return to the wilderness that once existed here. To what it was before the thing that happened. To what it was before even that. Nature is still healing her scars.
As are you.
As are we.
Nigel Fawcett, 2019
