Under Fire and Stars

From the photographer: “Etna’s eruptions are not just displays of force and spectacle: they are treasure chests of wonder, capable of evoking beauty and inspiring scientific reflection. They are living fragments of a nature that breathes, shapes and tells, suspended between sky and fire. During the paroxysm of the night between April 29 and 30, I had the privilege of witnessing a sequence of extraordinary phenomena. Protected by the leeward side, immersed in an almost surreal silence, interrupted only by the powerful breath of the volcano, I could hear every sound: the roar of the explosions, the rustle of the incandescent lapilli, the whisper of the living lava.

In the sky, the eruption dominated the central scene, but it was not the only protagonist. The stars rotated around the North Star: on the left the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, on the right the Milky Way, and the Summer Triangle, formed by Vega, Deneb and Altair, showed itself in all its splendor. And there, still but profoundly present, Igor Mitoraj’s Teseo Screpolato — symbol of the modern, heroic and fragile man — silently observed with me the majestic beauty of this volcanic landscape. A shared gaze, between stone and skin, towards the infinity that burns and rotates above the slopes of Etna.”

Technical details:
Canon 6d, Canon 8-15mm, f/4, iso 3200, 25 sec x 356