Calogero Cammalleri's 'Lipadusa' Photographs Lampedusa's Duality

On September 22, 2014, Rome's Tempio di Adriano hosted an event organized by Fabrica, the Benetton Group's communication research center founded in Treviso in 1994, under the patronage of UNHCR. The evening featured readings and projections addressing immigration and daily life on Lampedusa, centering on the presentation of 'Lipadusa,' a photobook by Calogero Cammalleri, a young photographer currently a fellow at the Istituto Veneto. The volume collects black-and-white images of Lampedusa—faces, landscapes, animals, fishermen—captured over nine months on the island, during the closure of its migrant reception center due to overcrowding. Cammalleri, who left Sicily as a child for Germany, returns after seventeen years as a 'migrant in reverse,' seeking his roots. The work transcends reportage, adopting a dreamlike, painterly sensibility that collapses chronological time. The event also commemorated the October 3, 2013 shipwreck off Lampedusa, where a Libyan vessel sank, killing 366 people with 20 missing and 155 survivors, the deadliest Mediterranean maritime disaster of the 21st century. The island is portrayed as both paradise and cemetery, a refuge and a necropolis.