The project "The myth where you don't expect it" was born inside the European Pagan Memory Day project to bring people's attention on all those representation of ancient myths that are often under their eyes everyday; sometimes, we are so used to see them that we don't pay attention to them anymore.
The project is a collection of photos that is open to everyone who wants to take part to it and take a picture of those mythical representation in our streets and squares (especially the Italian ones, but also picture from Europe are welcome). We now have a group on Flickr for free hosting of photos; at the present moment discussions on it will take place only in Italian, but we are ready to speak English if someone from outside Italy would like to take part to our project! On our Italian Video documentaries webpage there is also a tutorial video about the use of Flickr; it's in Italian, but searching YouTube you'll find other tutorial about using Flickr, in English and very well done. The symbol of the project is the fountain of the satyr riding a roe deer that you can see in our logo: it is located in Piazza Carli in Asiago, Vicenza. The idea of this project came from this fountain, when a friend of mine asked to some people who lived there where this fountain was because we had to meet under it, and they teased her because they believed that the statue of the fountain depicted a man riding a horse (see it by yourself!)
So we want to focus people's attention on the myths they always have under their eyes and so on all ancient myths. I have to underline that we are dealing only with ancient pagan myths, because in our Flickr group there have been some misunderstanding about the meaning of the word myth and some people posted off topic photos because they gave their own interpretation of the word "myth". If we manage to collect enough photos, we'll prepare web pages about them and add texts explaining stories about the depicted myths and their representations. There are many in streets and squares: the Hercules in Ercolano, Janus in Reggio Emilia, Neptune in Bologna and so on, just to give some ideas about where you can begin from. But there aren't only statues and fountains: also signs with streets' names, pictures, and local coats of arms (but not commercial logos) will be welcome.
If you want to take part to "The myth where you don't expect it", you can contact us via email; to prevent inconveniences, the pictures you send for the collection must have been taken by yourselves (or you can warrant for their copyright) and you must give us in an email the permission to publish them, signing with name and surname (and then tell us how you prefer to sign your photo, with your complete name, a pseudonym or anonymous). Since we would like, if we'll be able to, to organize an exhibition of these photos, you should send them, or upload them on Flickr with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, to allow printing. Don't forget to tell us where the object of your picture is, and all information you can give about it.
I hope that many of you will take part to the project.
Manuela Simeoni
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