Sailing on a tale's stage

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Sunday, September 4, 2011 | 5 photos

When I was five or six, my brother used to bother me with the story of the adopted girl. It wasn’t an original story, however, he had a powerful argument: there wasn’t any picture of me before the age of two. I remember myself looking over and over in my grandmother photo albums, searching for a hiding piece of the past, trying to fulfill the gaps of human memory.

Ten or fifteen years later, I found out a sheet of contacts with the very first pictures of my mom and me. I was a couple of days old and she was standing by a window. It was a black and white picture and there was a jet light falling over us. I had found a treasure, and even when those old stories of my brother were far away in the past, I ran to show him what I had found. I was pretty moved about that very precise moment, the beginning of my story, captured in a small piece of photographic paper.

My father was a photography passionate and I remember myself playing with the lenses and filters, like small pieces of jewerly. I always felt attracted by that black and tiny magic box. It turned out that I studied film and tv making, however, I never had the real chance to be a photographer.

A couple of years ago, I undertook a journey through the South American land. I bought then my very first own camera, and spent a very significant amount of the trip learning how to use it, trying to find a good angle and waiting for the right moment. Looking backwards, I realize that’s how I felt in love with photography. I discovered those countries, their people and their stories through a photographic lens.