La Prima Pietra is a visual exploration of the Strait of Messina and the long cultural, political, and symbolic stratification surrounding the Strait Bridge project. Its foundation stone has been announced more than eighteen times. Why does this infrastructural promise continue to obsessively occupy the national political debate? The idea of a bridge, even before its actual construction, generates a shift in public opinion, in the analysis of its costs and benefits, and in the perception of the surrounding environment. Thus, transcending its infrastructural significance, the Bridge engages with a new scale of values: territorial biodiversity, the Southern Question, the relationship between a country and its broken promises. Analyzing this repetition of announcements, financing, cancellations, and restarts means engaging with a broader mechanism, one that expands as it seeks to understand Italy's current situation from a postmodern perspective. Between the accumulation and bulimia of information. A question guides this visual investigation: "What if the Bridge's absence isn't itself a propaganda device capable of keeping alive an expectation that should never be satisfied?"

Manfredi Almiro Calabró lives and works between Bologna and Castellammare del Golfo (TP). He graduated in Communication Sciences from the University of Palermo. In 2026, he completed the three-year course in Photography with honors at the Spazio Labo' photography center in Bologna.

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