I was 10 and a guest, for a time during the summer of 1985, at my aunt’s in Perugia, sleeping in my then already grownup cousins’ old bedroom. The day was hot and muggy and I was really bored, so I started rummaging through a stack of old magazines and books accumulating dust on the top shelf of the bookcase.
After a bit, the awkward 10-year-old me stumbled – almost by chance, it had fallen behind other books – on a several years old issue of “Fotografare”, an Italian leading magazine for amateur photographers. The technical jargon gave me a headache at first, but from that moment on I was hooked.
If I had to pinpoint a moment in time when my love story with photography, and art in general, started it would be that lazy afternoon in 1985, in a ’70s-style bedroom, with dust dancing in the sunlight creeping in through the blinds shut.
In hindsight, the roots of this love started way before, considering I was lucky enough to be able to grow up surrounded by nature — my dad being an avid hiker, bringing me with him at least once every week out in the same mountains I keep taking pictures of; and by art objects and antiques — my mom being a collector and “resident expert” for all our friends and family.
All this was tinder waiting for a spark, and I will always be grateful to my cousins for having unknowingly started my lifelong love affair with photography leaving behind a couple of old magazines before moving out.
Photography, nature, and art after a short while all intertwined in a common goal. Even to this day, when I venture into a place with a camera in my hands, I still feel the pulse of excitement that little boy who was watching dust dancing in the hot sun felt many decades ago when he discovered this medium. I hope to be able to transmit to you the amazement I feel when I walk alone in these places full of allure.