The chimney, from the train

Between 1991 and 2024 Italian manufacturing employment fell from about 5.2 to 3.7 million workers: a 30% contraction in a single generation, concentrated in the large factories of the North.

Italy today has an estimated 6,000+ hectares of industrial sites lying derelict and not yet remediated: spaces that remain in the landscape as silent monuments to deindustrialisation, crossed every day by train travellers who barely notice.

The industrial city seen from a train window is never the same twice: the wind, the light and the time of day make it every time another factory, another labour, another life of those inside.

In the non-places of transit — stations, trains, motorways — the traveller is relieved of the responsibility of looking: everything offers itself in a few seconds and is forgotten in the few seconds that follow.