“DARIO STASI” 2023–2025, A LETTER TO A FRIEND, A BOND THAT IS RENEWED
by AGOSTINO COLLA
Dear Dario…
This is still the way we address a family member or friend in a letter. It’s an affectionate and direct, sometimes even critical, way to communicate our impressions and thoughts. This remembrance of mine goes in that direction, two years after the untimely passing of our friend, the editor and founder of the magazine Isonzo Soča.
Everyone who knew him, spent time with him, and appreciated him has a personal memory of him, mediated by the relationship built over many years, not only through the magazine but also through the human relationships that characterized his life. Each of us can outline its contours by giving our own personal touch to our character. Here I’d like to discuss my personal friendship with Dario.
We met and spent time together over twenty years ago, coinciding with the centenary of the Transalpina railway. The Isonzo Soča magazine and the Circolo Fotografico Isontino BFI of Gorizia, of which I was president, produced a photographic publication on the territories crossed by the railway that connected the Habsburg Empire to the port of Trieste in the early 1900s. From that work, I began a direct collaboration with the magazine and with the complex and multifaceted world of our lands, precisely because Dario introduced me to and appreciated it in its most remote corners. We produced and curated many issues of the magazine together, reflecting our interest in the history and geography of the places that Dario himself explored with an almost childlike interest and curiosity, finding, in each discovery, the reasons for his love for these places of ours and the events connected to them.
So many images have been swirling around in my mind over the years. One of them has remained etched in my heart, and it’s a photograph I didn’t take, but it’s as if I’ve always had it before my eyes. Rome, Palazzo della Minerva, the institutional headquarters of the Acts of the Senate of the Italian Republic. Isonzo Soča presents, before the highest officials of the state, the exhibition “The Long Century – A Photographic Itinerary in Twentieth-Century Gorizia.” The opening and the exhibition itself go very well, and all the attendees gather afterwards on the terrace of the Hotel Minerva in the square of the same name. Exterior, day. On a bright morning in an already warm April, we all gather to celebrate the event’s success. Some sip a glass of wine, some chat about their impressions of the exhibition, and some admire the beauty of Rome from the rooftops. I’m sitting across from Dario, who seems to be staring into space. His tie is loose, and his uniform jacket has slipped from his shoulders onto the arm of his chair. His face betrays a tender smile, revealing his satisfaction and pleasure at having succeeded in making Rome aware of the fate and complicated events surrounding 20th-century Gorizia. I, too, am genuinely moved. We look at each other in silence, saying nothing. Thoughts fill our heads about what this exhibition will allow us to do in Gorizia in the near future. The ideas are there; we’ll find a way to realize them, given these goals.
Let’s get to today. Dario hasn’t been with us for two years, but his ideas and goals continue to thrive, following his interests. The magazine has been reborn. It has changed its format and layout. The editorship is shared between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, and its success relies on the support of seriously engaged young people. The authors of the articles have renewed readers’ interest in the topics that have always been dear to the magazine, since its inception. The very recent inauguration, for Go2025, of a new exhibition on the 20th century, the “The City on the Border” exhibition, the permanent exhibition housed in the Epic Building in Transalpina, demonstrates how far-sighted Dario Stasi was in asserting, once again, the unique characteristics of our shared territory.
More than thirty-five years have passed since the magazine’s inception, and if GO2025 was able to emerge and thrive, it’s also thanks to that man with the mustache who, on his bicycle, introduced us to stories and territories narrated with passion and skill. Dario is missed by many, and I especially, but we are all aware of and grateful to him for having managed, together, to travel a significant part of our lives. This is why this bond can be strong and, consequently, can produce positive effects in creating our magazine.