Distant/ Andrea Gabellone

It is a bit like looking through a peephole at a personal black and white juncture, during which all certainties have been questioned. "Distanti", the photographic book by Andrea Gabellone, photoreporter of the UNHCR team and journalist from Lecce, recounts the Coronavirus pandemic in 11 sections and images alone. The book browses through two years read through a very personal diary that becomes a document and urges the permanence of memory. From the Prime Minister's press conferences to distance learning, the compulsory use of devices, the bewilderment of isolation, the habit of video calls and remote meetings, the difficulties of the ruling class in Lecce, vaccines, up to the drama of hospitals, intensive care, lonely stays, and deaths. The book, published by Manni Editori and presented in the spaces of the OgniBene library, is a collection of around 200 black and white photos that fixes a moment that has traced a clear line in human history, a demarcation between values, that has sometimes lost its senses but, perhaps, has also restored the sense of things.