I spent the spring of 1994 seeking the leading figures in an episode of 20th-century Italian history. During the 1930s entire families of peasants from the Veneto region emigrated south of Rome to drain the Pontine Marshes and founded villages named after the battles won during the First World War. Thirteen years later I extended the project to encompass another tale of emigration to Lazio: the Sardinian shepherds who brought their flocks to Maremma during the 1950s, and who have since seen their story repeat itself in the form of the shepherds from Eastern Europe who started migrating to the area in the 1990s. I then returned to the Pontine Marshes to photograph the new generations of peasants from Veneto and the northeast, and the recent immigrants from countries outside the European Union. Marco Delogu.