By the turn of 2002, the Fiat crisis reached its climax: the Turin-based company announced its unemployment figures and lists of plants doomed to closure, among which the facilities at Termini Imerese, near Palermo.That is when the disorders start.

The entire history of Southern Italy seemed to unfold in front of my eyes: a piemontese family and Sicily, the South both riotous and cliental, the unemployment problem and social blackmailing of the organised crime.

Witnessing such events, I conceived the idea of a photographic project about the South, a place which in times of “globalisation” is still concerned with the endless “questione meridionale” (the "southern issue"): a region that has always been a cross-road between development and under-development, both the center and outskirts of the Italian history.

Naturally, it's simplistic to reduce the variety within the southern part of Italy to the single term “southern issue”. Besides, if we look at the region's photographic history, it has often been approached through its different local realities: the various popular traditions, the weddings in Naples, the Mafia war in Palermo, the peasants in Calabria.

However, I believe it is possible to research and look straight into the single heart of south Italy, making use of the discussion on the “southern issue” to identify what its different realities have in common.