Continental Notebooks is a journey through the latitudes and longitudes of the Old Continent, with its strong and constantly evolving identities.
Today, we are witnessing a period of profound transformation, shaped by geopolitical tensions and significant changes in the policies of our historic Atlantic ally.
The war in Ukraine has brought back memories of the bloody twentieth century, this time entangled with divisive propaganda, economic interests, raw materials and energy profits.
Just like when the Holy Roman Empire fell, today, we are once again in a panic, which leads us to believe that we need something that exists formally, but we have never thoroughly considered in terms of structure.
The assumption was simply that the future was ours, and those on the other side were merely the past.”
We always think in terms of us and them, although we haven’t quite figured out what us really means.
Manuel Cicchetti’s journey through Europe and his photographs in these Continental Notebooks uncover that a shifting, evolving identity does, in fact, exist — Europe exists.
And yet, all too often, a sense of nationalist ego prevents us from seeing it. Philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós explained this phenomenon through the Spanish word for us: nosotros, meaning no a otros, as in exclusion, wall, barrier.
These notebooks, however, move in a different direction: that of observation, curiosity, and an attempt to capture, with a single picture, the countless threads already woven together, like harmonies already resonating in sympathy that often go unheard.
