Onde Sommerse

kids from south italy skating their youth through sea and olive trees

This work was born from the desire to tell a story that I was unknowingly living. I wanted to show my point of view on my generation through the places I’ve lived and the people who’ve been around me since the beginning of my adolescence. Along with a group of skaters, during the many days and nights spent together, I understood that the carelessness given by our “tender” age does not justify the combination of the adjective wasted with the word youth. Apulia, a territory that acts as a backdrop and becomes like a second protagonist of the project, greatly influences the psyche of local kids. The teenage period is almost entirely characterized by feelings that expand in any electromagnetic wave caused by the nervous system: it’s the time where you fall in love, argue, cry and let off steam, surrounded by a paradise made up of sea, rocks, olive trees, dry stone walls, endless beaches and majestic views. The beauty, the forms created by nature, and the man who influences it, help to better understand oneself and to look away from reality. The context kills the concept “I wanna be American” and automatically makes the photographed subjects re-emerge from the abyss that’s created in the iconographic world. I started this story when I was fourteen and since then this paradise has always been close to me. It’s why I enclose the sensations, emotions and all the feelings I have in the title of a Deftones song; “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)”