ABOUT

The village of Sant’Andrea Apostolo Dello Ionio is a small village in Calabria. In 2003 photographer Petra Stavast made her first visit there, after which she returned one or two times per year. In the project Libero, Petra Stavast reconstructs the life of Libero (1965) and Valeria (1967) Greco, children of an Italian man who, shortly after the Second World War, as a young man looking for a job, immigrated to the United States of America. He found a job, married an American woman and together they had two children. From 1966 to 1988 he sent letters and photographs of his two children growing up to his sister Delia, who was still living in Sant’ Andrea Apostolo Dello Ionio. In 1989, both the father and his sister Delia passed away, by which Libero and Valeria were cut off with their connections to Italy. In 2007 Stavast finds – by coincidence – an abandoned house with open doors. While entering the house, she came across with many family photographs, letters, furniture, and clothing on the floor. Silence and abandonment was all over the house that turned out to be the house of Delia. Stavast collected the photographs and the letters and tried to capture the feeling of silence and past memories through pictures of the rooms.