twenty seven springs, to get to know my father

I have walked barefoot in my family's garden through many seasons, feeling and seeing the changes in the plants and on my skin. While climbing trees and hiding in the many bushes, I've watched the surroundings change and the memories accumulate.

My father and I grew up in the same house, but he rarely spoke about his childhood or his parents, whom he lost in his twenties. I never questioned his silence or asked about it, I didn't think I could. Until  I realized I was about the same age he had been when it happened to him, and that maybe, just maybe, I could ask and understand.

For many in the older generation, there's a belief that pain and trauma must be hidden. Avoiding these memories can feel like a way of coping, but silence often creates intergenerational pain that quietly remains. This project traces my relationship with my father. It began when I found the many letters he had written to me when I was a teenager, his first attempt at connection that I had once ignored. Later, during visits to my hometown, I carefully began to ask him questions. As we live in different countries, our conversations continued via email. What began as small exchanges grew into months of correspondence, during which he shared stories he had long kept hidden.

I hadn't expected his openness. It was as if he had been waiting for someone to ask. This process brought us closer and helped us to see our complex relationship in a new light.

The family garden, the heart of the house, became the setting for these memories. We began by photographing each other by the last peach tree my grandfather had planted, a tree we both climbed as children. Years later, it remains a living thread connecting us to our shared past.

In telling this story, I am breaking the silence between father and daughter in a patriarchal society like Italy's. Through vulnerability and conversation, we began to break the generational silence and build a new kind of closeness rooted in understanding.