The publication by Ferruccio Delise and Franco Stener, born from interviews based on images of vintage postcards, was presented in Isola.

In addition to the numerous publications dedicated to the location, a new one has been added, entitled “Views of Isola d'Istria – work, environment and free time” published by the Association of Istrian Communities. The authors of the volume are two long-time friends of the Italian community on the island, Ferruccio Delise and Franco Stener. Delise is also the author of several publications dedicated to Isola, edited by Mandracchio and supported in the past by Silvano Sau. Taking advantage of the beautiful days and always adhering to the health prevention measures in place, the CAN of Isola together with the Manzioli Wine Bar hosted the presentation of the project outdoors. The cultural coordinator of CAN, Agnese Babič, introduced the evening by greeting those present, including Mario Paolo Depase, secretary of the Association of Istrian Communities – Onlus, publisher of the publication. The idea for the project came from Franco Stener, while holding in his hands his father Italico's collection of vintage postcards, depicting places from Muggia to Ragusa, now kept by the Regional Institute of Istrian Culture in Trieste. Having contacted his friend Delise, an islander by birth with whom he shares a passion for history and whom he met in his youth at the Canottieri Pullino club, they selected the images relating to Isola. The work began in 1994, when Delise, armed with the images, met 27 native exiles from the islands of Muggia, Trieste and Opicina, the oldest of whom was 92 years old. The interviewees entered the images and told their stories, reliving memories from about forty years earlier. The result was memories that were difficult to superimpose due to the different ages of the interlocutors. The work was then interrupted but resumed in 2019, when the structure of the volume was defined together with Stener. The evocative 93 postcards, dating back to between 1899 and 1943, are published in two versions, one enlarged and one in original size, which reports with stamps the places and names of the individual districts, houses, streets, squares and families of the time, the origin of the individual postcards, the senders and the recipients. All the names mentioned refer to the attached 1940 topographic map, drawn up by the islander Giovanni Russignan. Not wanting to create a traditional postcard album to simply bring back memories, the authors wanted to enrich the pages with insights by including a selection of passages from books, historical texts or newspaper articles from the 1920s and 1930s, which deal with the history of Isola from the Roman period to the present day. To give a logical sense to the sequence of images, Stener proposed an itinerary that would take its inspiration from the visit to the seaside town of a hypothetical “foreigner” and would have returned to Trieste along the Parenzana route. The graphic design was created by Fabrizio Masi, originally from Capodistria. This is therefore a precious and unusual volume, which offers various interpretative possibilities and, as Babič underlines in closing, an important document for the historical memory of future generations.

Source: The Voice of the People – August 23, 2021