150 years of Cavour Canal
<< Ombretta, listen... I would like to walk the whole Cavour Canal. What do you think? Can it be done? Will you give me permission? >>. And a slightly perplexed Ombretta replied << Yes Fede, of course we give you permission. But you can also pass on the Cavour embankments by bicycle or, for the most part, by car. Why on foot? It is very long! >>
A year has passed since that meeting at the Associazione di Irrigazione Ovest Sesia, ten months since this adventure began which first led me to walk the fifty-five kilometers of the Cavour from the Chivasso barrage to the Sesia siphon tombs. (near Greggio), then to return frequently to photograph the places I had chosen to tell the story of the canal.
But why on foot?
Be patient for a moment and I'll explain.
The Cavour Canal always fascinated me, it is a long carpet of water that unrolls placidly and almost motionless across our land, the Po valley We often perceive it only with the corner of our eye as we drive along one of the many bridges that cross it. Those who work in the fields, the water workers and a few other people have a broader view of it, but still limited to a certain area.
I have always wondered what was beyond. What that path hid.
The Cavour Canal near Livorno Ferraris
I started studying, documenting myself, discovering the incredible story of an amazing work. The Cavour Canal is the largest Italian water works and one of the largest in Europe: eighty-five kilometers of canal, from the intake in Chivasso to its mouth in Ticino; built in just thirty-three months by a workforce of about fourteen thousand people. An infrastructure that would define the vocation of an entire territory for the years to come.
I discovered the wonderful and tragic story of Francesco Rossi, born in Scavarda at the end of the 1700s and land surveyor of the Benso family in Leri, who was the first to have the intuition that there was a slope useful for creating a canal between the Po and Sesia rivers. Rossi was so convinced of his idea that he spent five years measuring the territory with a simple water level, almost reducing himself to the pavement. He believed in it and took the project to the Savoy government, but the Risorgimento and the wars stopped everything. He proposed the canal project to the newborn Kingdom of Italy and ran into his old employer, that Camillo Benso who fired him for incompatibility of views on how to manage the Leri estate.
The estate of Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour in Leri (Vercelli). Today the estate is in a state of neglect and often subject to vandalism: the municipality of Trino Vercellese, with the support of the Piedmont Region, is moving to raise the funds necessary to protect and restore this important nineteenth-century estate. Francesco Rossi, the first creator of the canal, also worked here.
<< So you really want to divide my farm into two parts? Or that you have absolutely no escape from this channel of yours? Oh my goodness! Could it be that you can't get it to go elsewhere? >> Camillo asked Francesco. And Rossi replied << His lordship, it is not feasible for me to find another way for my channel >>. << Your channel will not be done. >> These words were the tombstone that Camillo Benso placed on the project of his former land surveyor. But as often happens in Italian events, the paternity of the project was entrusted to Carlo Noè and the route slightly modified (making the construction more expensive), but the canal in the end was made… without slicing the land of the Count.
Telling these events would require years of documentary research and study. It is no different to narrate photographically, it is just another type of language: knowledge of the subject is essential. The only way I had to study the Cavour was to walk it slowly, trying to absorb every detail that the canal and the surrounding landscape offered me.
The large canal bridge through which the Cavour crosses the Dora Baltea near Saluggia. The photo was taken during the dry period of the canal for maintenance.
Because, and I quote Tiziano Terzani here, << for a true photographer a story is not an address to go to with sophisticated cameras and the right filters. A story means to read, study, prepare. Photographing means looking in things for what one has understood with his head. The large photo is the image of an idea. It is necessary to understand what lies behind the facts in order to represent them. Photography - click! - everyone can do that. >> This does not mean that I am a real photographer, but simply that I want to be able to tell the best of something that I am deeply passionate about, not just “click!”.
Not only rice and plains, but also green corners where you can rest and enjoy the coolness of a grove and the relaxing flow of water
The Formigliana unloader. The unloaders are closed which have the task of expelling excess water from the Cavour Canal and putting it into a natural watercourse not far away.
So at the beginning of May 2015, accompanied by a very patient Elisa, the walks on the Cavour Canal began: fifty-five kilometers divided into four stages, to have time to take visual notes on everything, make friends and learn about my subject. I had to study everything about the canal. What was the orientation, how the lights went out and at what time, what were the most interesting structures, how they worked and what they were used for, what are its peculiarities. And from those first walks, there were
26 "trips" on the Canal
About 20 hours of planning, study of the routes and places, of the best times
125 hours of field work
40 hours of post production and selection
in all, more than a full-time working month
2,200 photographs taken
3,600 km traveled by car
About 100 km on foot
Numbers that are destined to increase further, because I foresee it will still take two or three months to complete the project.
But the most difficult thing was understanding how to tell the Cavour Canal: it is not an easy subject, not at all. Studying, often going to the canal, I realized that he was an almost heroic character, who through adventures and difficulties humbly carries out his business of bringing the right amount of water, at the right time where it is needed.
Banal? Far from it.
But I don't want to go any further and anticipate you too much.