Breve viaggio nell’immagine alterata e inconsueta della Sicilia

This essay analyses the transformation of the Sicilian landscape from the post-war period onwards, contrasting the idyllic vision of the Grand Tour with the industrialised and violated image of the island promoted during the economic boom. Through a multidisciplinary investigation – including photography, narrative, cinema and inquiry – the essay highlights the central role of ENI propaganda in the construction of a modernist imaginary, functional to the legitimisation of the rapid industrialisation of the South, with particular attention to the emblematic case of Gela. The photo-texts produced in this context are compared with the counter-narratives of intellectuals and journalists – from Giuseppe Fava to Vincenzo Consolo – who denounced the devastating impact of these policies on the social, cultural and environmental fabric. The work highlights the important dialectic mediated by images and texts, between the rhetoric of progress and the reality of degradation, offering a critical reflection on the persistence of a model of development “without progress” (Hytten-Pasolini), which has erased memory and landscape in the name of modernity.