Un orto chiamato giardino

This photographic project is inspired by the philosophical novel “Candide ou l’Optimisme” by Voltaire. The garden is a recurring motif in the narrative, whose climax is the concluding phrase “But in the meantime, we must cultivate our garden”. Candide is driven from what for him was paradise and will travel in search of lost happiness. But the castle garden is ridiculed by Voltaire because it represents the limited, idle and bigoted world of the feudal aristocracy. The lost paradise is such only for the naive, the rediscovered paradise is given only in the experience of the Eldorado, explicitly mythical space and only mental model. The final garden is neither the return to the illusory happiness of the origins nor the utopia of the Eldorado. Candide and his companion renounce the search for Eden and find a secular dimension of commitment.