IMAGES AND IMAGINARY, an intimate necessity
IN WONDERLAND
Timidity and introversion have marked and characterized my communication from an early age. Only in the midst of people; uncomfortable between long silences and embarrassing expectations. Avoiding the people, the look a bit ’empty wandered around objects, looking for a foothold, some security. Finally remaining trapped by the unlikely interest in some object.
In this way I started to find ways of escape, longed for loopholes and discomfort. Objects seemed to be transfigured until they assumed new and unusual features. Prey to a swirling spiral my mind reworked the images from the eyes, so as to cross the thin border between real and imaginary. A surprising world opened before me, composed of dreamlike visions, colorful shapes, alien landscapes. Like Alice, I was traveling in the “Land of Wonder”.
NOTHING IS LIKE THAT APPEARS
Then I was completely unaware of it, but after so many years I became convinced that the concept of “objective reality” is very labile, instead I strongly suggest the concept of “subjective reality”. We often see what we are looking for or only what we want to see. Our brain is at the same time a powerful filter and a huge stock of images and information continually compared with what we are “seeing”. Our knowledge and our memory allow us to see often personalized and individual, sometimes unique. This world has remained for many years a my intimate, colorful and fascinating secret. My little hidden treasure, my island, my refuge.
CHICORY AND ROOTS
At a certain moment, however, in my life photography comes into play and with it, over time, the radical change in my communication. from my inner world and from the deep and intimate, how unconfessed, sensibility. And then the discovery, and the turning point. I found them among the radicchio leaves decorated with hoarfrost, Radicchio di Treviso Rosso Tardivo PGI, simply “Roots” for us in Treviso.
Nature photography initially, for many years challenging and exciting school and gym. But then, slowly, the constraints of having to document have begun to be tight, pressed with increasing arrogance
Stretched out, belly on the ground, the mind finally free from the obligations of the documentation, in the viewfinder of the camera my childhood dreams, and not only that, have begun to take shape again.
With the “roots” I had rediscovered my roots, my essence. Paradoxically in the same instant infinitely far from the real world yet so close and intimate, almost in symbiosis, with the earth.
The icy leaves were burning the skin of my cheeks, but I was immersed in another dimension and I felt nothing more.
The 105 micro was mounted on the camera. Thanks 105, you allowed me to give shape to my colorful imagination, you gave substance to my intimate feeling and seeing. You have shocked, with incredible and unsuspected therapeutic and liberating power, my way of communicating. You allowed me to find the way and the courage to share with thousands of people what belonged only to me.
That today is here to tell me it is further irrefutable proof.
TRAVELER
It flatters me to be considered and presented as a traveler, but the few reports I have made in remote areas do not justify this definition. I could not travel as much as I would have liked, not in conventional terms at least. But yet… and admiring, ecstatic and incredulous, improbable landscapes with bizarre and colorful shapes.
Yet many times I found myself exploring surprising and wonderful worlds, trampling paths little frequented if not unknown
Mother Nature was generous with me when she gave me the keys to open that narrow little door, hidden and secret, which is told in certain fairy tales. I found that little door … a tiny slit in the back of my camera, it was enough to support the eye that was immediately sucked and projected into an unexpected dimension, unknown, charming and alluring, seemingly so remote as to seem an alien landscape yet so physically close, only a few inches beyond the goal.
This is the dimension of my frequent travel. Travel suspended between reality and dream, introspection and research, emotions and knowledge. Journeys in which, by paradox, the distances are canceled and even the orders of magnitude and the concept of time, as we know them and without the usual references, lose meaning. Travel necessarily lonely, travel that I can not share, just tell.
Travel often consumed between my kitchen and the countryside around the house. Camera in hand and a good tripod always ready, looking for vegetables and grapes, along perilous paths between kitchen gardens and stoves, cellars and vegetable mills, sharp knives and fragile crystals. I even stuck in boiling pots and ventured over boiling sautéers and then went to cool in the fridge. I have not even left out the sink and dishwasher, and I certainly did not forget the vegetable residues before throwing them in the wet bin.
Exploration at home, introspective low-cost travel, authentic travel or just an attempt to make a virtue of necessity? Yet of these trips I keep unforgettable memories, fascinating and surprising experiences as those experienced in the boundless Australian deserts or between the volcanoes and the ice of Iceland.
The photographic backpack is always ready, I just take it and leave … whenever I desire, need, inspiration, opportunity, in every free moment, daily or almost. There are no walls that can imprison me, nor limits, no longer or not only an escape, but a powerful key to access free and boundless worlds.
That’s how I traveled. That’s how I keep traveling.