On the island of Stromboli, there is a slightly out-of-the-way place where the boats end their journey. It's not an official cemetery, but rather a storage area, an improvised dumping ground. There are worn-out boats, sometimes abandoned, sometimes put aside to wait to be repaired. I chose to photograph this place because it shows another side of the island. Far from the images of volcanoes and beaches, this accumulation of damaged hulls tells of the daily life of the inhabitants, their permanent link with the sea, and also the difficulty of maintaining boats in such a harsh environment. Through my series, I wanted to capture this atmosphere. For me, these carcasses of boats are not just rubbish, but traces of a local history, fragments of an ancient and vital relationship between the inhabitants and the sea. They remind me that even the most solid objects, made to face the waves, eventually erode and return to the landscape. A cycle that resonates strangely with that of the volcano, always active, always destroying and recreating. I wanted to document this place, which is often invisible to the visitor, but which is an integral part of the island's reality.
