David Siddall

'S idea to create a series of pictures dedicated to Sardinia's most famous festival stems from the discovery of Huck Scarry and his Italian sketchbook. The project this time is designed for editorial and exhibition: drawings, collected in one book, are small and often only sketchy and therefore could hardly be exposed.

The book (whose publication is planned for 2011) is the diary of a son of Sardinian emigrants who decided to return to Sardinia to attend the festival of Sant 'Efisio, an event he knows only through the story of their grandparents. Cagliari reaches the end of April to follow even the preparations for the feast day after day and is increasingly involved climate capable of uniting the sacred and the profane ...

Here are some excerpts from the book and all images, many of which are new, the texts were edited by Valerio Cristiana Dessì and Ortu.

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Sant 'Efisio ... memories of a trip

And here I am finally in Cagliari, the city that gave birth to my grandparents knew her well, even before I saw it with my own eyes when I was seven years.

They left the city in the early '50s research "in the continent" a job that would allow them a better life. In Milan, soon found a job, got married and returned only occasionally in their 's homeland. 'S love for Sardinia and Cagliari, Cagliari them, has never ceased: of that 'love, sometimes nostalgic, were imbued with the many stories my grandfather who entertained us and with whom so many times during my childhood, I've "visited" the city, along with the fancy streets of the old quarters, breathing 's salty smell from the sea, through the Marina district, came from the small terrace on the third floor of a small palace in Stampace that was my great-grandparents and where my grandfather spent the first twenty years of his life.

It 'just one of those stories that has pushed me to get to Cagliari today for a short holiday in the city. On 1 May is celebrated all over the world as Labor Day, but for my grandfather, of Stampace, the date had another meaning: Sagra di Sant 'Efisio.

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I organized the trip trying not to "betray" my grandfather tried to revive as much as possible the feelings that accompanied my grandparents in the many journeys that, at least once every two or three years, they reported on their land. In all my years have never taken a plane, were the fantastic 'arrival from the sea and the view of the city that gradually became more clear as the ferry approached the port, priceless.