In the early morning mist, Civita appears suspended in midair. A Fata Morgana, the ancients might have called it: a mirage of a city in the clouds. As one climbs the steep footbridge, gently sloping rooftops and an imposing 8th-century bell tower gradually emerge from the fog.

Civita’s inhabitants have been struggling for millennia against the vicissitudes of the moving earth. In the early 20th century, government officials, citing frequent landslides and failing infrastructure, relocated many to nearby Bagnoregio.

Slowly abandoned, Civita has fewer than15 year-round residents today. Despite modern engineering efforts to slow the town’s erosion, piece-by-piece Civita continues to slip away. Its epithet “the dying city” – il paese che muore – seems well deserved. Long isolated from the world, Civita feels like a place where time stands still.

The exhibition Fra Nuvole e Vento explores the collective dream of a people who live in a place where the past is ever-present. American photographer Brian Stanton focuses on moments that express centuries of tradition, capturing locals gathering chestnuts on the slopes below the cliffs, crushing grapes in volcanic stone wine cellars that their ancestors used for thousands of years, and cheering on the sidelines of La Tonna, Civita’s high-spirited donkey race. 

Another compelling sequence shows residents carrying Civita’s revered 15th-century wooden figure of Christ down the bridge to Bagnoregio as part of their 400-year-old annual Good Friday procession. The community strives to keep faith with the cultural memories and cherished religious rituals that bind the social fabric of their town.

Stanton’s photographs were inspired by the resilience and hope of people who refuse to let Civita disappear into the mist.