La lunga strada di sabbia

The extraordinary illustrated book "La lunga strada di sabbia" is the unprecedented documentation of a travel reportage by the writer and later director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the photographer Paolo Di Paolo. The two men are still young in the summer of 1959, just 37 and 34 years old, and set out together to document Italian summer holidays on behalf of Arturo Tofanelli, editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Successo and the weekly Tempo. The two, who had never met before, travel south along the coast from Ventimiglia to Trieste. While Pasolini, the writer, is looking for a world of lost literary ghosts, Di Paolo wants to depict an Italy that looks to the future. The title "La lunga strada di sabbia", which translates as "The long road of sand", also comes from him. It is precisely these contrasting approaches that will later give this travel reportage its very special significance as a witness to this era.