L'Aquila e La Rana

According to several scientific studies, hundreds of frogs behaved strangely in the days before the 2009 earthquake at L’Aquila. An ancient legend attributed the occurrence of an earthquake to the jumps of a giant frog, carrying the Earth on its back. Zheng Heng, Chinese scientist, invented in 132 a seismograph called Didong Yi, at the base of which eight frogs were represented.

Through the use of original photographs, archival images, newspaper articles, literary texts and scientific studies, “borrowed” (Shakkei) as photographs of a complex contemporary landscape, L’Aquila e La Rana (The Eagle and The Toad) is an experiment of bestiary in the book-format of a newspaper, investigating in what terms the prevision of natural phenomena, synchronicity and the imaginary (the frog) is related to the vision of the natural world, the real time and the documentary (the eagle).

Text by Sabrina Ragucci.