Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
Some time ago, I asked my mom what kind of girl I was.
She replied,
“Well, it's been a long time, but I remember very well one thing:
your strong aversion to dark places.
As weird as it may sound, that's the reason
why 18 years ago I took a camera in my hand.
I started photographing when I was very young:
I had something to say,
but I couldn't put it into words.
I've always been denied writing,
in fact I'm not hiding you
that even to prepare this speech I spent so many sleepless nights.
I speak better in pictures,
and photography for me has always been like a pen,
a pen with which I am writing my story.
Often, indeed,
when I see my first photographs
it's like reading the pages of a journal I've never written.
This diary starts
when I moved with my family into a new home.
I don't have a very vivid memory of that time,
maybe because he wasn't one of the happiest.
In fact, I tipically spent a lot of time alone,
and most of this time
was spent right inside the new house.
At first, though, I didn't feel it like mine.
So, I took the camera to create a bond,
and I started photographing myself at every corner,
setting up small sets, recreating surreal situations.
Maybe I was escaping reality;
or maybe I was just creating a world I could live in,
a place for me.
I've been doing all this every day, for three years.
And so, from an unknown place,
the house became the set of my first photo series.
It was as if, thanks to the photograph, I was slowly making light
on those dark corners I feared as a child.
After three years, however, I said to myself:
enough, I have to get out, see what's beyond these walls.
And so I went out,
and I started photographing Latina, the province I grew up in.
This time I started from a place I knew very well,
but I rediscovered in a new light:
the light of August's dawns,
when the city is deserted, the streets are empty,
and suddenly you are the only resident.
For the first time I felt the city more intimate, more welcoming,
a feeling of belonging I had never felt before.
In those moments, I understood
that my intent is not to photograph what I see,
or what happens before the sight;
rather, to give an image
to what I feel, to what's inside me.
This awareness gave me a boost,
a push to go further and further:
away from my home, away from my city,
to new, often unknown physical and mental places.
Creating, time after time, throught the photograph,
a contact with the external dimension;
but at the same time with my inner one.
When I was 20, things changed a little bit.
I entered a competition, won a scholarship
and I finally started studying photography,
first in Rome and then in New York.
I felt, however,
that it was time to open a new chapter.
There was so much more to tell, and something was missing.
Perhaps because life is surely made of places, yes;
but also people, especially people.
Thus, having archived the period of study abroad,
I get back to Italy, in the house where it all started,
and I decided that the time had come: I had to photograph my family.
In this new creative process,
I wanted to actively involve my family members
and leave them free to express themselves,
to decide where to take the photograph,
what to wear and how to pose.
It wasn't supposed to be my picture. It was supposed to be our picture.
My mother is the first one I decide to involve.
I perfectly remember the day
when we took this photograph:
we were home alone,
and after lunch we decide to take a few test shots.
I take the camera, mount it on the tripod,
she suggests the point where to take a shot,
I meanwhile imposed framing, exposure and focus.
I mean, everything was ready, everything was decided:
but the moment I go and take the photograph,
she puts her hands on my eyes.
I don't know why she did it: instinctively, she kept me from seeing.
That gesture, that blindness, did open my eyes,
because it made me understand, once again,
than the contact through the photographic medium
is an extremely true, authentic and vulnerable contact
even when relationships with other people come into play.
In fact, the most interesting and valuable part of this work
was the involvement I got during the shots,
with which I discovered
some unknown aspects of my family.
So I said to myself:
if I find out all this stuff about people I know so well,
what could I ever find out about people I don't know at all?
I started taking pictures with strangers.
By "strangers", I mean people
I had never known before,
and this work was the case for it.
In the initial phase,
I delivered to strangers a disposable camera,
and asked them to photograph
everything they felt, everything that represented them.
Later, we viewed the photographs together
and decided how to take the shot.
The design phase
was the main moment to get in touch with them,
that allowed me to understand - indeed, it allowed us to understand -
what facets of their personality
they wanted to represent through a single photo.
The path of this work has been precious,
and led me to live an authentic experience,
one you don't live every day,
with totally unknown people
that became intimate in a very short space of time.
It was, then, nice to see how almost everyone understood
how powerful pictures are as a tool for introspection,
one that can translate, through a single photograph,
so much of our being, so much of who we are.
Today, looking back at my path,
I realize how much this research
took me away from my home
to observe the world outside, relationships, emotions, the other.
I feel like my photographs have grown with me,
but I grew up mostly because of them.
And I'm not talking about goals, or work successes,
because my greatest achievement
remains the tool I've found
to get in touch with my inner dimension.
That allowed me to know myself, to grow up,
address personal issues and find my place in the world.
More than ever,
in this confusion of information, images and noises that surround us,
the risk is precisely to get lost,
and to find ourselves living
in the idea or image of someone else, more than in ours.
That's why I think it's extremely important
be able to find a means to help us focus on who we are.
For me, it's photography;
but it's just one of these many shapes.
And if I'm here to tell you all this,
is because I think each of us already has this medium inside of us.
He just has to find a way to shape it.
And you don't need a talent to succeed: you just need the will to explore.
For example, if there is anyone among you
who has the interest, and curiosity,
or even the need to start this research,
well, let me share some advice.
that may perhaps sound strange, said by a photographer:
do this research with your eyes closed.
Do not let yourself be influenced by what surrounds you.
Don't be influenced by other people's voices and experiences.
Just follow your intuition, your instincts,
and what you feel, what you have inside you.
For the answer is only there.
And one more thing:
let's not be too hasty,
because this research can take place at any time in life,
and especially at any age.
It's never too early or too late.
The exploration of the self, I think, is really a free journey,
with no rules, and above all with no errors.
If I think of me as a child,
and that strange aversion to dark places,
well, it doesn't seem that weird anymore to me.
In fact, that is the reason that gives meaning to this whole journey.
And I, for me, can proudly say
I've transformed all those dark corners
in light-filled images.