I dreamed of a different tomorrow

Photos stop time, crystallize the moment, embellish a memory. Yet since I started photographing I have never really been interested in looking back and dusting an old memory on film. Strange to say for a photographer, but I don't suffer from nostalgia.

At almost 48 years old, however, as if to rearrange something in my past, the desire to visually tell my childhood, my troubled path from adolescence to the period after graduation when I decided to leave my land Sicily and seek fortune in the north, came forward in me.

The labor I am talking about dates back to the early years of life, when I was diagnosed with a malformation in my right eye at the age of 3. This also had implications on my personal growth as, being visibly "different" (the eyelid was almost ajar), I was often the object of derision by my classmates and looked upon with keen curiosity by relatives and strangers. The result was a very shy and introverted character, almost wanting to escape the pathetic question every time "but what did you do to the eye?" as if it depended on my unconsciousness. At about 10 I was also predicted that by the time I was 20 I would become blind and deaf, as I had already suffered from severe tinnitus since then. Fortunately, both in that moment of diagnosis and some time later I never had faith in the report, convinced that surely fate would have chosen something else. With great respect for medicine, I'm happy to say I was right.

Shyness gradually crumbled thanks to the discovery of photography. My uncle had an old Kodak from the 20s of the twentieth century in his house and we had a lot of fun shooting in the countryside. A Polaroid 1000 from my brother then did the rest, fiddling with snapshots that captured festive moments but also glimpses of the city. From that moment, photography has become my new eye prosthesis, my third eye. An essential love that has allowed me, today, to be able to "pack" this first part of my life. And, although I am not very similar to it, looking back I can say that it was a journey of preparation. Like when, having climbed an immense rock into the sea, I could no longer go back and was forced to jump about 15 meters. The dive was successful ... and also my journey into the unknown, in search of a better future, always with those suitcases ready in front of the door, for a new challenge even with myself.