TAKE CARE OF YOUR PRIVACY

LOOK INTO MY TRUNK

I don’t know if any of you have a chest or trunk where you keep your memories. Sometimes the door of the past opens and many things related to our childhood come out. I opened the trunk of my memory and what I found is beautiful. My grandmother had this trunk, which was actually a chest, which served as a coat rack and bag storage, on which we children sat and imagined driving a carriage, complete with a simulation of the noise of the horses’ hooves, beating the timed heels on dark wooden board. This trunk, however, escaped its textbook location because it was in the corridor and did nothing but feed our curiosity as city children looking for new pastimes with which to pleasantly fill the long afternoons spent at grandmother’s house, slippers with heels and television on those TV programs that she called “useless things”. Although curious, we were not used to approaching the trunk in the corridor too frequently because we felt a sort of awe, most likely infused us by our parents, since inside there were “grandmother’s things that if you touch them she realizes and gets angry “. But one day I took courage and asked my grandmother to show me what was hidden in the trunk. She opened it and in the midst of letters, my grandfather’s military clothes, old newspapers and strange objects, photos of her past came out. I looked at that world in black and white and I wondered what colors the clothes and eyes of those people who unconsciously stared at me immortal from the photo cards had had. I asked my grandmother for the names of multitudes of objects unknown to me, information on their function, on what they had done, if the iron was really as comfortable as it seemed from the relaxed expression of a relative portrayed in the moment of starching a shirt. squares with an indecipherable color. And my grandmother promptly answered all my questions, standing, elbows resting on a round table now full of photographs; she seemed younger to me and it was easy for me to see in her the signs of that girl who survived the war.

ONLY SEX PRODUCES MONEY?

I don't want to advertise a site that allows women, and a few men, to sell nude photos or parts of themselves that are paid a lot of money by followers.
I learned about this online prostitution a short time ago and I learned of really huge amounts that are obtained from this commodification of the human body. I was shocked because once again it is sex that makes money. Sex is required by many men. It is the men who buy those photos, it is they who demand to see more and more. to see certain poses, certain parts of the body. So there are many girls, even very young ones, who sell photos of this type. So what is the use of female independence if the female body is still sold to earn money? Sure, these girls aren't on the streets, they're not in danger, but they're on a screen, and men continue to use them for their pleasure. Girls who should have understood that life is not only made of beautiful clothes and jewelry but who demonstrate that they have a brain deviated from this society that does its utmost to make you think that earning money with sex is now a normal thing and who does not do it is considered stupid. You who speak of God here, maybe your daughters are selling themselves and you don't know it. There are a lot of schoolgirls selling photos, even mothers, young boys. It is something that I think is really harmful to the image of the woman and yet men continue to be and always want the same things from a woman, that is, her body and that's it.

ORIENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY

I love to photograph, I love to immortalize every moment of our life on a camera display, to then print it and attach it everywhere.

Do you know why I love photography? Because it allows me to capture that fleeting moment, that moment that I will never get back, except in my memories. I hate time. That’s why I love photos; because, in a way, it’s like I can stop it.

Photographing is a co-creating, a co-becoming. It is like breaking down, merging with the other person and then eventually regaining one’s own identity. Only afterwards it is no longer the same thing. I took a photograph of every moment and of every passing person in my life. I photographed for fear of forgetting. I photographed, instead of looking, of memorizing. And now I find myself with a thousand photos, and no memories.

For those who want to recover everything that passes before their eyes, the only way to act consistently is to take at least one photo per minute, from when they open their eyes in the morning to when they go to sleep. Only in this way will the rolls of exposed film constitute a faithful diary of our days, without anything being excluded. If I started to photograph myself, I would go all the way down this road, at the cost of losing my reason. Instead, you still claim to exercise a choice. But which? A choice in an idyllic, apologetic sense, of consolation, of peace with nature, the nation and relatives. It is not just a photographic choice, yours; it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic contrasts, the knots of contradictions, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you fall into mediocrity, into stupidity.

I took pictures. I photographed instead of talking. I photographed so as not to forget. Not to stop looking. I love to photograph. I love having material memories, and I think we should all photograph our memories, and always carry them with us.

Taking pictures is holding your breath when all our faculties of perception converge in front of the fleeting reality: in that instant, capturing the image turns out to be a great physical and intellectual pleasure. To photograph is to put the head, the eye and the heart on the same line of sight. For me, photography is a way of understanding that does not differ from other forms of visual expression. It is a cry, a liberation. It is not a question of affirming one’s originality; it is a way of life.

A photograph: who knows what fascinates us in these colored or black and white pieces of paper. Every time we look at them, we get excited, always. I photograph, because it makes me feel better, so I have the whole world at my fingertips, I never lose anything. Not because I’m afraid of forgetting, I’m not that many years old yet. People who say ‘photographer so I don’t forget things’, I just don’t understand them. What are you stupid? Maybe you need a doctor more than a camera. I photograph because it’s not the close-ups that are important, but the details. Just yesterday I was looking at the photos taken a few years ago and I noticed details that I had never noticed before. How beautiful. A photograph never ceases to amaze us. Photographer to photograph, which seems idiotic as a thing. Have they ever asked you why you breathe? Why do you love? There isn’t a real answer, because there is, you need it. Here, I need to photograph. Not compulsively. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. It’s not like if you shoot every day you’re a better photographer than someone who shoots twice a month. Maybe for two weeks, two months, the machines remain in the drawer collecting dust, because I can’t, I don’t want to, and what do I know. Then, one beautiful morning, I see details, colors, people that drive me crazy, so I absolutely have to photograph them. There is nothing more beautiful and stimulating than taking pictures of complete strangers. Photography is worth much more, for the fugitiveness of the moment. Notice: maybe this girl is passing through that street, because yesterday she lost her connection to Milan, so she decided to take a stroll along via Montenapoleone, maybe she’s going to look for those strawberries dipped in chocolate that she likes so much and you you are there, by chance. Your lives in that moment cross, without a word, without a real look, just a flash. Here, this shot is yours forever, you will observe it millions of times thinking: ‘It goes as it came out good! I love it’. This happened to me with just a few clicks, and the real emotion is imagining the life of these people, what they will be doing right now, in what part of the world they may be. Often, we wish we could find them, to give them what belongs to them. Because, ‘I insist, you must have it, it’s too beautiful, you look gorgeous in this shot’. And obviously the chances of meeting these subjects are practically close to zero, this is the crucial point for photographers. We fall in love with things seen only once. And we carry them with us forever.