July 24, 2000

Dear Ternani #6

"Survivors"

One significant difference between Italy and the U.S. during the last
century is that we Americans have not experienced war fought on our own soil while you Italians have watched it roll down your streets and explode in
your skies. The scars of war are carved into your earth and your buildings.
I had a vague idea of Terni's history during World War II and I wanted to
make portraits of some of the veteran soldiers from that time. My friend
Luciano Crisostomi, the Ternano artist whose frescoes adorn the walls of the Bibliomediateca, took me to meet Comunardo Tobia, a Ternano who administered the local Associazione Partigiani. Comunardo is an older man of medium height and stocky build who carries himself with a certain air of strength and dignity. He had been a Partigiano during World War II and is passionate about preserving the history of the Partisan movement in Terni.

The headquarters of the Associazione Partigiani is a few small rooms tucked away on Via Dei Filis. One of the first things I noticed when I went there was an old, framed, formally posed, black and white photograph of a young man. On the bottom of the photo was the inscription: "Luigi Trastulli,
Metallurgico di Terni, Caduto per la Pace il 17-3-1949". I instantly knew
that my portrait of Comunardo would have to include this other photograph.
I explained my intentions to Comunardo and he politely made it clear that if
I were going to photograph him I should understand first what the Partigiani
were all about.

A week later we sat in his office and as he told me the details of how Terni
had been bombed to the ground in World War II my perception of the city
began to change. I had not realized how terribly the Ternani had suffered
during the war, and how they had managed to put their city back together
when the bombs stopped falling. In this light, the city's modern buildings,
described as at best "charmless", at worst downright "ugly", became for me
symbols in concrete and steel of the courage and tenacity of the Ternani.
Terni was not postcard pretty (try finding an aesthetically pleasing
postcard of Terni - I couldn't!) but real life is rarely depicted on postcards. The reality of Terni was the fact of over one hundred bombing raids which brought destruction and death; it was also the fact of survival and resurrection, the proof of which was found in those same "ugly"
buildings and piazzas built after the war.

I would think about these things when I walked through Piazza della
Repubblica on late afternoons, weaving my way through the crowd of old man who gather there every day at that time, the first to come back outside
after pranzo. I looked at their old faces and I thought about Luigi
Trastulli's face in the photograph in Comunardo's office, a face forever
young, fixed in a moment fifty years previous. I wondered how many of the
old men gathered in afternoon in Piazza della Repubblica had known Luigi
Trastulli, had worked by his side at the acciaieria, had fought by his side
"per la pace", had weeped for his death? It was a sobering thought as I made my way down Corso Tacito to get my hamburger and fries at that little piece of America in Terni, McDonalds.