Historical Museum of the Landing in Sicily 1943
2013: back to Sicily after seventy years
Seventy years after landing as a war photographer, Phil Stern come back to Sicily to inaugurate his personal exhibition of photographs on Sicily in 1943. A journey into the past to retrace the places where he witnessed a great moment in history.
It is not just a journey into memory that Phil Stern made, laboriously, in July 2013 in Sicily. It was the closing of a circle. The awareness that his life was complete.
The circle has a beginning and, inevitably, an end. Phil Stern opened his circle seventy years earlier, again in Sicily, landing on the island with US Army soldiers to photograph the war and everything it brought with it.
He was young and thought he was indestructible. Still an inexperienced photographer.
Then he became the greatest photographer in Hollywood, wandering around the sets of Los Angeles and immortalizing the intense gaze of James Deen and the blue eyes of Marylin Monroe. At 94, he returned to Sicily to inaugurate his exhibition of unpublished photographs of the Anglo-American landing of 1943. Thus the circle was closed. A perfect circle, because the beginning and the end coincided.
“I returned to Sicily to rediscover my youth,” Stern repeated in those days, “even though I am aware that youth only happens once in a lifetime. On this island I lost the certainty of invincibility. Here I saw and understood the horror of war, I felt the wind of death beside me. I was wounded and for me it was a stroke of luck. Many other boys, many friends, did not return home and since then they rest in the war cemeteries of this wonderful island.”
"In the life of each of us there are people, moments, experiences destined to become indelible images of our own life: Phil Stern was my frame."
Ornella Laneri
The documentary
Phil Stern.
Sicily 1943, the war and the soul
Phil Stern's return to Sicily is the occasion to make a documentary about the life of the American photographer. Phil Stern tells his life in a long interview with Ezio Costanzo, set in front of the Falconara castle, in Sicily, in one of the sites of the American landing. Stern's words are accompanied by images of his military career, which began at just 21 years old with his voluntary enlistment in the Rangers and the war in Africa, and then of the great moment that saw him as a protagonist in Hollywood as a photographer of the stars of world cinema.
The documentary also recounts the days of Stern's return to Sicily, in 2013, after 70 years: the images follow one another from Catania to Comiso, to Licata, to Gela, to Noto where Stern receives honorary citizenship and an enthusiastic welcome.
The documentary film was produced by Le Nove Muse Editrice in co-production with Credito Siciliano and Fondazione Credito Valtellinese, with the contribution of the Sicilian Region - Department of Sport, Tourism and Entertainment and Fondazione OELLE Mediterraneo Antico.
The impact with the island is extraordinary. The landscape and the colors of Sicily are the same as then.
" The light is intense, sometimes violent, but always fantastic. Even then there was spectacular visibility.
At that time, however, we were scanning the sky waiting for the German planes to appear.
The wonderful thing was that the planes never came to my sector .”
From the documentary
"Phil Stern. Sicily 1943, the war and the soul"
by Ezio Costanzo
The book
Phil Stern
Welcome back to Sicily
Photo by Carmelo Nicosia
Stern's days in Sicily are recounted in a prestigious volume, full of photographs, testimonies and various writings.
"Sometimes it happens that the gaze of a great man, photographer, traveler, curious, at times visionary, a gaze full of tension and hatred for suffering, crosses with humility and power, for one last time, the story of his life; he relives the dawn of a project that begins by will and destiny in the desperate light of Sicily, at the dawn of one of the darkest historical periods for all humanity..."
During their stay in Sicily, in July 2013, Phil Stern and his family, children and grandchildren, were guests of Ornella Laneri in her Sheraton Hotel in Aci Castello.
"Unforgettable days - Ornella recalls - of emotions that leave their mark. For this reason, after his departure, I wanted that mark to remain here forever, dedicating the suite where he stayed to his name".
