Lugo is so real: it feels unreal. Not far from the medieval town of Ravenna, it is a dream, a Richard Scarry-esque “Busytown” with all the stock cast members of a BBC sitcom. People greet one another in the street and the Rotary Club wheel adorns windows. The Mayor rides his bike to the annual vintage car and plane show alongside the librarian, who is also a poet. Lugo even has its own local hero to celebrate as the main purpose for the weekend’s festivities: Count Francesco Baracca.
An Italian Rudolf von Flugel, he was a famous flying ace from World War I whose prancing horse symbol was adopted by Ferrari after he died (in service to his country, of course.)
We were invited to visit Lugo by Luca Nostri (http://www.lucanostri.com/) a photographer we met in Rome and the organizer of Lugoland (http://www.lugoland.it/web/?l=it). Lugoland is a brief arts' residency of sorts where photographers such as Olivo Barbieri, Tim Davis, David Farrell, Guido Guidi, and Graciela Iturbide have come to make their own work in and around Lugo. Photographers stay in the Ala d’Oro Hotel (http://www.aladoro.it/), which means wings of gold and is an illusion to Baracca, whose fame and presence pervade the city, including in the form of a tiny museum and an enormous statue in the town center. The hotel is owned by Luca’s family, the most gracious and amiable hosts one could imagine. Their support for the project is evident in their warm welcome and the volume of photography adorning the hallways of the hotel.
We spent much of our time in Lugo at the local airfield where Baracca was being fêted. The trees of the airport cafe had been planted to match the colors of the Italian flag: purple-red leaves alternating with bright green and the hangars were set-up in the style of a high school science fair with individual displays about satellite stargazing or high tech flight simulation video games. A dignified older man sold handmade Ferrari inspired andirons, while young women sold corporate aviation logo t-shirts and baseball caps. Along the tarmac, local businesspeople and volunteer workers sat behind card tables exhibiting everything from contemporary surplus US Army gear to a 1950’s Italian Red Cross ambulance. (Not quite Ernest Hemingway’s era, but naturally I thought of him.)
The strangest arrangement by far was a large camouflage tent installed by the Italian military. A path wove its way through the structure, past displays of equipment meant to highlight different aspects of military life, mostly humanitarian ones such as medical aid. At the end of the path was a room with rows of chairs and mannequins in various eras of dress uniform. Two soldiers stood at attention next to a trio of flags and a large plasma television played an MTV produced video about the joint efforts of US and Italian troops in Afghanistan. Anti-war music (John Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival) blared as both Italian and American soldiers proselytized about the life opportunities provided by a career in the service. Walking through the displays, part propaganda, part artifice, part real life, part MTV hype, it felt like the Venice Biennale meets an American Midwestern veterans’ celebration. The video, the mannequins, the staged quality of the tent felt like the curation of war as a performance piece. Outside, on a smaller tent nearby, a banner reminded us that militaries keep civil societies safe. Not far past the sign, a group of men and boys had gathered to test model planes that made more noise than the real thing.
There was something universal about the weekend (despite the unmistakably European quality of a village like Lugo), a realization that the world is very small, after all, and that we share many things in common, but not in the way of a Coca-Cola drink cart or the Disney carousel in the town square of Lugo, or the propaganda about an international “humanitarian” coalition in Afghanistan. It was the way that Luca’s grandmother offered us lunch on Sunday afternoon before we left for Rome or how families filed out of church on Sunday for coffee afterwards (granted in a café on the square.)
I felt this sense of common human ground at the airport in the Rotary Club members who remind me of my Uncle, as I watched girls primping for their boyfriends’ cameras in front of vintage cars or automobiles (some dreams: of luxury cars, of flight, are universal), in the gathering of firefighters, teachers, lawyers, us, at picnic tables lined up inside a hangar for lunch while waiting for proscuitto and melon or ravioli with butter and sage instead of hot dogs and burgers. The human desire for celebration and remembrance that comes in the form of fireworks and grandfathers in old uniforms marching with the flags of their units reminded me of photographs I have from Civil War commemorations in Victor, NY (when my great-great grandfather marched down Main Street at the turn of the century) or a gathering of the remaining soldiers from my friend’s father’s World War II unit, who were on the beaches of Normandy and will meet in Pennsylvania next month. The whole affair recalled everything from rodeos or horse shows in California, to the Cherry Festival in Michigan, to Fourth of July celebrations in Western New York to the World War I commemoration we saw in central France last month. In the middle of a small town in the middle of Italy, far from my usual home, with new friends and their families, it somehow all felt familiar.
Links:
http://www.lucanostri.com/
http://www.lugoland.it/web/?l=it
http://www.aladoro.it/
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