The Scotto di Vettimo family, who made their living from fishing, left the Bay of Naples at the end of the 19th century and settled in Stora, Algeria, then French territory. A generation later, in 1962, Robert, my grandfather, had to make a hasty decision. He was warned that new mujahideen from afar would not appreciate the presence of settlers in their newly-liberated territories. The Scotto di Vettimo family set sail for Marseille. My mother was just 9 years old, and had no idea that she would never return.
This was the fate of nearly 50,000 Italians in Algeria, first leaving their homeland in search of a better life, then building an identity in this colonized land.
In order to reconstruct this journey, I have set up a dialogue between my family's archives and my own work. The latter is a series of portraits, landscapes and still lifes. I also conduct interviews with Algerians who knew these pieds-noirs. I also go to Italy, to the Bay of Naples, where the descendants of those who stayed behind still live, and to the south of France, where most of the exiled Italian pieds-noirs are concentrated.