Il tuffo, from the Italian: the dive.
Cefalù is a fishing town on the north coast of Sicily, built under a rock so large it has a name of its own. The Greeks called it Kephaloidion, from kephalē ‘head’, a monstrous head rising straight out of the sea, and the town took its name from the rock. Its Norman cathedral is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Below the old town runs the molo vecchio, the old harbour wall which in summer belongs to whoever gets there first. Once a year it becomes something else: on the sixth of August, a 16m mast is fixed out over the water at an angle and greased along its length. Young men from the fishing families walk it to reach the flag at the far end, which carries the Christ Pantocrator. Almost all of them fall. They call it 'A Ntinna a Mari: the mast at sea.
I didn't have to ask for this photograph. The boys saw the camera and came over desperate for it, one already climbing, the rest negotiating who went first. The rock, the water, and a boy suspended between the two for as long as the shutter was open.
Il tuffo, from the Italian: the dive.
Cefalù is a fishing town on the north coast of Sicily, built under a rock so large it has a name of its own. The Greeks called it Kephaloidion, from kephalē ‘head’, a monstrous head rising straight out of the sea, and the town took its name from the rock. Its Norman cathedral is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Below the old town runs the molo vecchio, the old harbour wall which in summer belongs to whoever gets there first. Once a year it becomes something else: on the sixth of August, a 16m mast is fixed out over the water at an angle and greased along its length. Young men from the fishing families walk it to reach the flag at the far end, which carries the Christ Pantocrator. Almost all of them fall. They call it 'A Ntinna a Mari: the mast at sea.
I didn't have to ask for this photograph. The boys saw the camera and came over desperate for it, one already climbing, the rest negotiating who went first. The rock, the water, and a boy suspended between the two for as long as the shutter was open.
