Italian photographer Alma Bibolotti has created a deeply personal photographic series titled "Mario e il Mare" (Mario and the Sea), documenting the spaces once inhabited by Mario, a young father and husband who died at age 42 from cancer. The project explores themes of permanence, absence, and memory through intimate landscapes along the coast of Avola Marina, where Mario spent his final days.
The series focuses on a specific location along the Avola Marina coastline, where Bibolotti describes the light as seemingly endless. In this coastal setting, she captures the houses, sand, and water that moves "like an ancient thought," creating a metaphor for life's eternal cycle. The sea itself becomes a central character in the narrative, constantly moving yet fundamentally unchanged, representing the continuity of existence beyond individual loss.
Bibolotti photographed the locations where Mario lived his daily life before his death, transforming these ordinary spaces into a visual meditation on how time continues despite profound loss. The photographer captured these scenes during two distinct seasons - August and February - creating a contrast between summer light and winter darkness. This temporal approach allows the images to serve as filters for conveying complex emotions of hope, separation, and remembrance.
The project treats the landscape as a silent witness to personal tragedy while acknowledging the universal nature of grief and memory. Bibolotti focuses on details like walls, rust, and reflections on sand, using these elements as a visual language for expressing farewell. The photographer describes the work as being "marked by the time of illness and then by the time of the end," approaching the documentation as a slow, ritualistic process.
Rather than focusing on death itself, "Mario e il Mare" emphasizes what endures after someone's physical presence ends. Bibolotti explains that Mario is absent from the photographs, yet each image represents both his absence and his continuing memory. The series includes imagery of receding horizons, empty cabins, closed houses, and the ever-breathing sea that continues its rhythm even when everything else stops.
The photographer's decision to document these intimate, everyday locations serves a dual purpose: telling Mario's personal story while reflecting on photography's power to preserve what would otherwise fade away. Bibolotti views the project as transforming grief into "an act of poetic resistance," using her camera to hold onto what naturally flows away with time. The work demonstrates how art can serve as a bridge between presence and absence, creating lasting monuments to temporary lives.
