Photography and memory are inseparable elements, for photography aims to preserve recollections of the past over time. Riviera romagnola is therefore a work on memory: a hotel room keyring, a tablecloth, a door handle. A change to just one of these details would suffice to completely distort the overall appearance and atmosphere. These places are destined to fade away little by little. Their condition is somewhat fragile, which is why I felt the need to capture them in photographs.
I went back to the Romagna Riviera in 2017, the first time in many years. To tell the truth, I didn’t even remember having been there as a child with my parents, but on returning there after so long, it all came flooding back to me: it was a real blast from the past. The Riviera opened up a time tunnel that led me right back to when I was a child in the 1980s. Even the music was the same: I could hear the same records of the day blaring out of the speakers in the ice-cream parlours.
Photos by Stefan Giftthaler
Text by Vittoria Fragapane