Dear Ale

 Dear Ale

I know you will probably not be reading this missive, but I will write to you anyway.

I do not know who you are, but I know your full name is Alessandro. I know that probably on a boring school trip to the Pieve of Gropina you felt the need, like a tomcat marking his territory to leave your mark on this lovely old building.

Maybe you found the beauty and silent Sacredness of the place frightening, as for a moment you saw a world beyond the frantic small screen world of Tik Toc and Facebook and you just had to defile the place.

Some us enjoy visiting these testaments to the past, to spend a moment in silence away from the rat race, and some of us like to make photographs in these places to share our Italian  cultural heritage around the world via internet.

But thanks to people like you Ale, it is becoming ever more difficult to visit places like Gropina. I am doing a photographic project concerning Romanesque architecture and places that were in the past open during the day are now closed and impossible to visit. Items are roped off to protect them from barbarians like you when you do find a place open.

But you are not alone. Thanks to the posh middle class morons of "Just Stop Oil" throwing stuff on the masterpieces hanging in our museums, I foresee that visiting a museum or art gallery will become far more difficult, we will see sections closed off due to lack of personnel to protect them.

Ale, you are a factor, together with those creating and allowing private public spaces and the neurotic "privacy" fanatics, that are making the possibility of going out and actually photographing places ever more difficult.

Regards