On Maps and Stories

Welcome. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time.

In my family home there are two quite ordinary artefacts that focus on my father's life. To provide some background: my father was born in Brisighella in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy on 23 or 24 March 1932. No one is certain of his date of birth as family members and documents tell differing stories. Our family has always celebrated it on 24 March. He passed away in June 2001 in Brisbane.


The first artefact is a tattered old photo album with a black cover that documents two phases in my father's life. First there his military service in Italy as a paratrooper in the 1950s, a marvellously rich series of photos of young men in uniform. Second his life as a rigger and linesman building high tension transmission lines. He began working with in this capacity in the early mid 1950s and the first photographs, of the the Bari to Foggia line, were taken in 1955.

The second artefact is a stained and torn map on which my father used drawing pins to mark the places he worked. He also draw lines between the points marking out where the lines ran. No one can remember when he did this but the map has been in the family home for at least 20 years. However, some of the pins are now missing, leaving small punctures in the aged paper.


These documents are uniquely about his life. There's something about these acts of documentation that I have always loved and through this project, I am hoping to reflect on and honour these artefacts as personal and social documents.