The story of Azzanì's aviator told in a meeting in Loiri Porto San Paolo

The story of Azzanì's aviator told through the images that the pilot himself took during his career in the Italian Royal Air Force. The fascinating military life of Pietro Bonacossa, the Gallura Major who took part in the African Campaign between 1935 and 1936, will be at the center of tonight's meeting in the Sala delle farfalle di mare in Loiri Porto San Paolo.

Born in the small hamlet of Azzanì to peasant parents, Pietro Bonacossa put his land surveying studies in a drawer to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot and in 1928 he obtained his license at the Seaplane Piloting School of Passignano sul Trasimeno, in the Province of Perugia . A few years earlier, with his first salary as an officer in the Bersaglieri corps, he had bought that Zeiss camera that accompanied him throughout his military career. He was a twenty-year-old enthusiastic about being part, like many of his peers of the time, of a grandiose enterprise such as that of the African campaign alongside Galeazzo Ciano, but he was also a great photography enthusiast and the thousands of shots taken on board one of the aircraft of the company "La Disperata", I am a cross-section of time.

In flight over Ethiopia, the young Bonacossa photographed a lot; spontaneous images, African villages, rivers and waterfalls but also hilarious moments of cheerfulness between fellow soldiers, like a snowball fight during the 1929 frost in Lazio. "It is a collection of beautiful anthropological and naturalistic value," says the archaeologist Marcello Cabriolu, who has cataloged the 1400 shots collected by his sons Massimo and Raimondo. «It took two years to try to reconstruct the precise places and dates of each image - explained Cabriolu - many of the captions on the photos were generic and I did extensive research by images and documents to reconstruct the chronology and places, both in Africa than in Italy".

Among the photos that will be shown at this afternoon's meeting there are also shots of Olbia in the 1930s, then called Terranova, and Major Pietro Bonacossa became the Commander of the Vena Fiorita military airport after the African campaign. There is also his Azzanì among the photographs in the precious collection, images of an extraordinary life that the family, with the patronage of the Municipality of Loiri Porto San Paolo, wanted to make known to the citizens of central Gallura.

After the opening greetings by the mayor, Francesco Lai, his son Massimo Bonacossa, Captain of the local Barracellare Company, will give a brief introduction and show the 1933 Zeiss with which his father immortalized his life in those years. «It is with a certain emotion, as well as with great pleasure, that we show my father's photographic collection - comments Massimo Bonacossa - we are happy to make his story known to the locals because this is where he decided to return when he left his military career, and he did so at a time when it was not obvious to choose to return to the countryside". After the screening and the historical commentary of the archaeologist Marcello Cabriolu, also the eldest son of Major Bonacossa, Raimondo, will intervene for the final greetings and thanks.