“I capture the magic of the dawn lights: sunspots in my lens”

Naregno (Capoliferi, Elba Island) – Sunrises are not all the same, but they do look the same. If you decide with the intention of photographing them every day or for about 10 years, and cataloging tens of hundreds of images in raw format in an archive, then you are looking for something. And it’s not hundreds of shades of red.

“I am interested in light, for many years I have been photographing this amazing place, Naregno, every day, in search of luminosity” – he says Gian Carlo Diversi, Photographer from Elba He who has found in the lens a way to penetrate reality and become one with the nature that surrounds him.

Dawn after dawn, into the morning of July 11th, you want favorable weather conditions, a high humidity rate, the turbulence of the previous days, you want a trained eye, Gian Carlo was able to visualize the large sunspot R3310 with the naked eyeFour times the size of the photographed Earth. Then the pictures were taken from the site that deals with astronomy coelum. com.

We went to see him, naturally at dawn, to find out more. He greeted us enthusiastically with a cup of coffee and a camera on a tripod. “It’s never happened to me in so many years of observation,” he told us, “I think I’m the one or only one of the few who observed and photographed the R3310 spot on July 11.”

Video interview

What are sunspots?

“These are large dark regions, depression regions on the Sun’s surface where the temperature is low and the magnetism is very high. They can be dangerous because they then generate explosions that can cause magnetic storms and major blackouts on Earth. We are now in a phase of maximum expansion of the Sun’s frantic activity that peaks every 11 years.”

What is the importance of your photography activity?

“Photography, using the lens to look at reality, allowed me to discover things I had not noticed before, and thus led me to delve into subjects I did not know, to study the cycles of the sun and moon, plants, and animals. Today I am qualified as a photographer of the territory following the daily transformations of nature, from wild animals to plants, including the many endemic organisms that characterize the Tuscan island protected here. And the Italian mainland on the other hand, with the changes of climate, wind, sea and currents, we are wonderful producers of energy here that we can capture the “great light and its colors”, ” As did the Grand Tour painters of the nineteenth century.”

Photo by Gian Carlo Diversi (Photo by Valerie Bezerra)

What luster are you looking for?

“I am a visionary. I seek beauty and kindness. The lights and shadows that surround us are the ones in our lives. I seek the vital energy, the sparkle. The light is ‘shining’ and I follow it, sometimes for hours, sometimes minutes or seconds, when I find that I feel a real state of euphoria. It is an outsider’s view to enter your personal world and see things as they really are.”

Gian Carlo Diversi (Photo by Valerie Bezerra)

Here we are also close to the important wetlands of Mola, did you notice?

“I have spent many years studying the many species of birds that exist, from large migratory birds that stop during their long journeys to birds that become sedentary afterward. We have an infinite wealth, our wealth is a world small and large to observe, penetrate and love.”

What do you think of the water maker?

“I’ve always been against it, not so much because of the project I was able to study that was well done, but because of the other possibilities that there could have been. It’s an impactful industrial work and it’s near a wetland that’s key to protecting biodiversity. It’s a very large plant that could be useful in predicting drought, but it was a government imposition, not a choice.”

Time is running out, it’s time to say goodbye, but we’ll listen for hours. , the sixty-year-old from Elba (born in Brazil), has many things to say. We discover that after a past as a political activist and various disappointments, he has spent the past seven years almost in complete seclusion, with the exception of his partner, Nancy. And now, it’s finally time to “come back”. Welcome back to Gian Carlo Diversi who is already considering a photo collage organized with Alessandro Beneforti and others, scheduled for August 2nd here in Naregno.

by Valerie Bezerra