Visioni per Johana
(2015)
For the first time, I tried to tell through photography the lands where I was born and raised. I wanted to share with her the imaginary of my childhood, my adolescence and the present that recently I had left. I was aware, by the different cultural codes, about the difficult situation with which I was faced by wanting to empathize with her from a distance, with remote places she’d never seen.
The impossibility of doing this trip with her led me think of register my environment to tell her with these pictures at the time of my return. So, I was documenting with my camera the things that happened to me during the course of the days.
I went to La Spezia, the city where I was raised, and Roma, my grandparents’ city. I traveled through Tuscany with my brother on an old Vespa 125. I visited the cities where I used to live as Bologna, Pisa and Milan. I walked along the fields and shores around my city as well. With my camera I was looking for something “archetypal” about my country which represents an intimate imaginary.
Was during the travel that I realized that this practice was helping me to see in a different way, enabling me to be more creative with the places that I had always been surrounded and to which until then I hadn't paid that kind of attention.
Because of her and the love that flows from her, I could see - the reality that always was around - with the eyes of who is seeing for the first time.
Italy, 2015