As part of the international photography award Arturo Ghergo held every year a Montefano (MC) Some photography exhibitions were held last September including “Sentinelle” dedicated to hunting, to which the local Federcaccia section collaborated. The photographer Matthew Natalucci explains the project as follows: “This project is the result of a great deal of commitment that will continue over time for the town of Montefano, a territory that is still almost untouched by today's world. The aim of the project is to document, through the photographic portrait, the hunters currently present in the municipality of Montefano, to create a "catalog" that remains over time as a collective memory and cultural heritage of this territory.
In this small town of only 3.458 inhabitants there are about 40 hunters who habitually practice the activity of hunting. In 1970 there were over 200, this testifying to how the years passed and the change of society led to a drastic decrease in the figure of the hunter. I decided to portray them so that these photos can testify over time a figure that has always been part of rural society, giving a face to a minority of people still present in the less anthropized Italian territories, whose values are now incomprehensible to modern society. The hunter is the last sentinel of a complex and at the same time atavistic emotion.
He maintains a deep bond with the environment and with the animals, of which he is a profound connoisseur, which he pursues, hunts and consumes. The hunter is part of a practice made up of rituals, in which he develops his senses, patience, tenacity and cunning to subconsciously satisfy an ancestral instinct. Today the hunters also carry out many activities for the protection of the environment and for civil society, such as cleaning rivers, taking care of old paths, the recovery of abandoned sources for watering animals and the management of invasive species or the repopulation of others. Often they are carried out silently as per their custom ”.