The vast urban sprawl of Lombardy, Italy’s most industrialised region, has given life to nameless spots that seem to exist autonomously, with little dialogue with the landscape. Inspired by Rem Koolhaas’ essay Junkspace (2001), this photoessay by Simone Ludovico shows the only moment in which nowhere adorns itself to become memorable.

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“Junkspace is post-existential: it makes you uncertain where you are, it makes you unclear where you are going, it destroys the place where you were”.

Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace, 2001

 

Starting from Koolhaas’s text on the junk spaces of contemporary cities, I began a journey to observe places which, during the Christmas holidays, are filled with bright installations. My journey always starts when the “heure bleue” (blue hour) starts, the evening falls and the lights suddenly come on.

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°09’34.1″N 9°04’45.3″E | Main image: 45°09’31.2″N 9°05’05.7″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°14’58.1″N 8°43’05.8″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°09’16.5″N 9°07’33.3″E

 

The areas I have crossed are located outside the main towns of western Lombardy, they rest in the outlying areas, along provincial roads, or next to those roadside markets scattered throughout the out-of-town territory. These are spaces characterised by commercial development, which extends linearly as it crawls along major transport axes, iconically characterising low-density residential areas.

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°10’13.9″N 9°08’39.6″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°19’30.5″N 8°25’59.2″E

 

These zones have been transformed by urban sprawl, by the city that has grown by expanding untidily, leaving behind, here and there, silent urban clusters. Geographically, the territories belong, in part, to the irrigated Po Valley. Over the past 50 years, this once agricultural region has seen a drastic transformation of the land as a result of the expanding residential and industrial zones. The agricultural countryside and the urbanised countryside merge into each other, creating a liminal space.

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°24’31.7″N 11°55’14.4″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°27’46.9″N 8°13’06.8″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°36’25.0″N 8°24’57.9″E

 

I visit the parking lots of the shopping centres, those of the industrial areas, the residual spaces at the edges of the streets, the petrol stations; giant scaffolding turns into giant Christmas trees, entire facades of banal sheds shine surrounded by luminous threads, expanses of parking lots host glittering metal cones.

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°24’38.4″N 11°54’28.7″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°24’31.5″N 11°54’32.2″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°04’58.4″N 9°15’60.0″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

44°05’47.2″N 8°14’01.7″E

Anima Loci Simone Ludovico

45°11’25.0″N 9°12’02.4″E

 

Perhaps these insignificant spaces in themselves need to be taken care of, once a year, with a luminous revolution that redeems them from anonymity? Perhaps these structures, as individuals who, affected by rickets, need solar rays, they need luminous devices to reveal their own identity?

The journey ends at the end of January when the lights go out and all that remains is to wait for the arrival of a new Christmas to see these places shine in the night.

 

About the Author


Born in Biella in 1977, Simone Ludovico is an Italian photographer who works as a teacher at secondary school (scuola media). He graduated in Territorial, Urban and Environmental Planning at the Polytechnic of Milan, with a thesis on the relationship between cartography and photography as a means to build specific territorial overviews. Since 2010 he has collaborated with institutions that work with people with mental and physical disabilities, as well as economic and social hardship. In 2013 and 2014 he worked with the Voghera prison conducting photography workshops with inmates. Since 2015, he has worked in different schools (primary and secondary), organising projects concerning the exploration of urban space.

www.simoneludovico.it

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