In light and shadow: travel notes of an anarchist storyteller
Carrasegare, the ancestral carnival in Sardinia
Among all the popular Carnivals in the Mediterranean area, the one that takes place in my land, Sardinia, has certainly preserved its most ancestral traits, linked as it is to the cycle of nature, the end of the bad season and the irruption of spring in the life of the island's agro-pastoral communities. Nor, so far, has the ever-increasing influx of onlookers – tourists, scholars, photographers and film-makers – managed to scratch the hard core of the different traditions. Both for the direct involvement of the local populations, and for the rigorous preservation of methods and features, including physical ones - those of zoomorphic masks that vary from place to place - whose origin precedes the Christianization of Sardinia, sinking in more than one case its roots in the transgressions of the ancient Dionysian rites.
The core of the celebrations that take place every year is the archaic and controversial relationship between man and nature. A relationship that, in ancient times, gave man the role of the sole guardian of his own survival, and nature, specifically animals, the opposite and opposite role of entities to be placed under control as much as possible. Bending it to one's own needs, but also fighting it when terror for the unknown was animated through it: adverse destinies, evil and its demons, sickness and death.
For this reason, what we witness in the Carrasegare (a word that means "meat to be dismembered", to be consumed), always has the liberating flavour of a rebirth - from winter, from bad luck and evil - but also the archaic and ferocious one of domination over nature and animals. In fact, in the scripts of the various carnival events, they are always subdued, chained, kept at bay with pitchforks and sometimes beaten or even killed.
Sa prima essia
"Sa prima essia" – the first release of the masks – takes place on January 16 of each year in Ottana, on the night when the bonfires of St. Anthony, the Christian Prometheus who broke into the underworld to give fire to men, burn throughout Sardinia. It's the moment when you really feel like you're catching in the air, along with the lapilli rising from the fire, the long-awaited and crazy breath of the Carrasecare. Around a gigantic bonfire of tree trunks that has a circumference of no less than seventy meters, the masks of the village dance. The Merdules, the guardians of the cattle, who hold a stick in their hands and wear white sheepskins. The Boes, the oxen, who wear masks with long horns and carry 30 kilos of cowbells on their backs. The Filonzana, an old hunchback woman dressed in black, holding a spindle and a roll of wool in her hand, and personifies the fate that can sever the thread of anyone's life at will. The same masks will then parade in the following month, by the hundreds, impersonated by adults and children, through the streets of the village.
Lula's blood
In Lula, a small village of shepherds and peasants, the Carrasegare brings with it a ritual of blood and death of an exquisitely Dionysian nature. The long ritual of dressing the main mask, Su Battileddu, takes place in the square, in front of everyone. The Battileddu, with his face blackened by soot, has his head encircled by goat horns, between which a piece of the animal's stomach is secured, and wears raw sheep and mutton skins to which cowbells are attached. On his chest, he carries the entire stomach of a ruminant, filled with blood. The Battileddu is thus dragged through the streets of the village by the supporting masks, who also have blackened faces. The Gattias, men disguised as widows, who alternate between shouts, laughter and dirges, and the Massaios, the guardians, who tug at the Battileddu and prick his stomach to bring out the blood with which they smear his faces. Throughout the performance, which takes your breath away with its formidable emotional impact, the Massajos do not fail to keep at a distance with their whips even the photographers and videomakers who become too intrusive. When the Battileddu breathes his last, and the last drops of his blood are shed on the earth, thus making it fertile again, the ritual will be completed and the wine contained in a large barrel will be distributed to all present, so that the feast begins. It will also be offered to Battileddu, who will thus be resurrected from his death.
Carrasegare Ulesu
Even the Carrasegare, which takes place in the small village of Ula Tirso, has always had a very strong emotional impact for me. The main actors, who all have their faces blackened with soot, are this time the Urtzu, the divine sacrificial victim, Dionysius reincarnated as half man and half animal, wearing a boar skin complete with head; the Domadores, who lead him through the streets of the village chained to a chain; the Bardianos, the guardians who wear black shepherds' clothes, armed with powerful sticks ending in gnarled roots; Maskinganna, a popular mask that belongs to the collective imagination of the whole of Sardinia, a deceiving demon dressed in a whole skin of a ram with long horns. The script of the play that animates the streets of Ula Tirso, sees the Urtzu struggling and trying several times to escape. But each time the man-animal is stopped by the Domadores and the Bardianos, who force him to the ground by dealing formidable and thunderous blows of the stick on his back. A spectacle whose charge of violence often makes those who witness it for the first time pale, and do not know that the Urtzu actually hides under the boar skin a sturdy cork board that cushions the blows. While Maskinganna observes the relentless action of the Bardianos without intervening, the Urtzu lets a little of his blood fall to the ground every now and then, in order to ensure her fertility: blood that is actually the same wine, strong and sour, which at the end of the rite will be offered to all present.
Black as the darkness of the night
The common trait of all the carnivals that take place in dozens and dozens of small and large towns in Sardinia, is the custom of blackening one's face with cork soot, usually taken from the embers of a fire lit on the spot. A distinctive sign – to which very few events are extraneous, including those animated by the reckless horsemen of the Sartiglia of Oristano of the Carrela 'nanti of Santu Lussurgiu – which responds to the need for disguise, for the reversal of carnival roles. And also, at the same time, to get as close as possible to one's own animal nature, outside the conventions and shackles of everyday life.
Which, for me as for every other photographer, concretizes an immense catalogue of extraordinary subjects to be shot, especially with black and white that most emphasizes the beauty and intensity of the faces and expressions portrayed. Having been working on it for many years now, I decided to collect the best images in a project that I called "Portraits in Black". The following images are taken from the Carrasecare of Samugheo, Oliena, Teulada, Siniscola and Fonni.
