Regina Viarum

• Prize
  Bronze in Editorial/Photo Essay
• Photographer
  Attilio Bixio

Via Appia Antica, also known as "Regina Viarum", is one of the most important roads built by the Romans. It crosses Basilicata from Venosa to Genzano di Lucania and it’s included in the Unesco World Heritage sites since 2024. The road intersects some places involved by a great land reform in the 50s of the 20th century. But the reform proved to be a failure and now much of what was built in those years is abandoned or in ruins. Today, in the same places, even the Via Appia Antica is only partially visible and it is quite abandoned, in a sort of desolating "harmony" with the surrounding lands.

I live in Potenza, Italy, where I work as a green building engineer. My attention is directed mainly to document the territory where I live, through urban photography and landscapes, in which I'm always searching for traces of human presence. I often focus on spaces that can tell us something about people living and using them, even beyond their aestethic appearance. I have a minimalist approach to the world of photography. I think that in photography it’s better to subtract things rather than to add them. Simplicity for me it is a value.