MATTEO DE MAYDA
There’s no calm after the storm
An extreme weather event hit northeastern Italy in October 2018, the incessant rain had rivers bursting their banks and the 200 km/h (124 mph) sirocco winds brought around 14 million trees crashing to the ground: an event the likes of which Italy had never seen before. It’s estimated that the storm, classified as a hurricane due to its strength, devastated around 42,500 hectares of forest, and caused €3 Bn worth of damage.
Four years after the Vaia Storm the consequences are still tangible.
The European spruce bark beetle feeds on the wood’s tree, a parasitic beetle that has moved on and is now feeding on the trees that are still standing, causing six times the damage that was generated by the storm itself. Fallen trees are no longer able to provide protection against landslides and avalanches, and the now unstable river beds are no longer able to channel and contain water. As if that wasn’t enough, the local economy in these mountain communities has suffered incalculable damage.
BIO
Matteo de Mayda (b. 1984, Italy) is a Venice-based photographer. His visual research focuses on social and environmental issues, using a mix of documentary, archival, and scientific images.. He participated in several exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture, MUFOCO, Triennale Milano and Design Museum of London. In 2019 he published “Era Mare”, a book about the high water in Venice. In 2020 he was selected by Artribune as the best young Italian photographer of the year and in 2021 he was selected by Camera Torino among the emerging talents of the FUTURES program.
In 2022 he won the British Journal of Photography International Award. His images have been featured in The New York Times, Financial Times Weekend Magazine, Internazionale, Zeit, 6Mois and Vogue.
IN COLLABORATION WITH ISPA- Italian Sustainability Photo Award
The project was carried out with the contribution of the ISPA 2021 Grant. The Italian Sustainability Photo Award is a photographic award conceived by the Parallelozero agency and born in 2019 to raise public awareness on the issues of environmental, social, and governance sustainability, summarized by the acronym ESG. The aim of the award is, in addition to rewarding single photos and photographic stories, to support the authors in the story and in the free interpretation of a current and relevant theme: every year the ISPA Grant finances a project to be developed over six months in Italy. The images on display are printed by Press Time Group, a company that uses non-toxic and odorless inks, preferring recycled and recyclable media.