Almost four years ago, I was invited for Shabbat dinner at the Garelik family in Crown Heights, a Lubavitch, Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. I had just sat down at the table when Rabbi Yossi’s wife, Chani Garelik, took me aside and uttered to me a sentence straight from the Torah, “Col Cvuda Bat Melech Pnima,” which, translated, means “The pride of a Daughter of the King resides in the most secret depths of her soul.” She said to me that if I really wanted my photographs to speak about religious women, I first needed to understand this concept on my own. “Daughters of the King” began that night, at that instant, although I was not able to take any photos then. Chani Garelik became my mentor, my so-called Muse. Interestingly, she never permitted me to photograph her. I kept going back to her house to seek advice on how to approach my subjects; how to behave among religious, Jewish women. Little-by-little, I became part of the lives of these women whom I randomly met on the streets of Brooklyn. After a while, they began inviting me to their weddings and dinners. Even now, they recognize me when I am walking in their neighborhood to go shopping, as if I have become part of their world, as if—at least for a moment--I am one of them. With my photos I have sought to avoid the common stereotypes frequently attributed to Orthodox Jews. I have attempted to show aspects of these women, their most spiritual ones--those that transcend their religion and its strict rules governing the sanctity of their bodies. I chose to delve into a deeper dimension of my subjects’ holiness--one of femininity accompanying every gesture, every moment of their daily lives as religious women. In my images, head coverings, long-sleeved dresses, modest skirts and shoes ceased to be barriers to unwanted eyes, but instead, became vessels exalting the attributes of these women, not only as Jews, but simply as women. In almost four years, I mainly photographed Jewish women in the largest religious communities in the world: Brooklyn in New York, Israel, and Paris in France. In these countries, the majority of Jews are Ashkenazi, ethnically from northeastern European countries, such as Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. But, since I wanted my photos to show more geographical and historical diversity, I also included Sephardi Jews. So, during this last year, I traveled to North Africa where I took my camera to Tunisia and Morocco. The little island of Djerba in Tunisia is the oldest Sephardic, Jewish community in the Maghreb, one that, even now, maintains a very good relationship with its past colonial power, France. My experience within these communities has not always being easy. But, with time passing, these religious women changed their attitude toward me, and started showing me my own way inside the Torah without pushing me any further toward their own religious views.

There is a space in between our visits. A space we reach every time we encounter after months apart. A parallel dimension made of faded memories, secret gardens and future hopes. This space is sacred for me. It's a safe place for being oneself completely. A space of distances unreachable, yet unifiable. A feeling of belonging even when only once in a while for a little while. A present tense. Never a dull one. "L'albergo delle donne +1" wants to show the relationship I hold with my mother and my two sisters (and occasionally my father) after so many years abroad. A space held suspended in a different element, the one of uncanny and outspoken singularities. My family talks, loudly so, judges, deeply so, pushes, unrelentingly so, but they do it with the hope, once we listen, we will be more attentive and awaken to the daily challenges in that space of diversity they have created for us to taste life to the fullest. A place where nothing is held back, everything comes out at once and directly as to mask the facade reality imposes on us to cover the truth.

"37" is a movie by Dutch Director Puk Grasten. The film is inspired by a true story set in 1964 in the Bronx in New York, where several neighbors witness the brutal rape and murder of Kitty Genovese and did not intervene in trying to help her before it was too late. The film peeks into the lives of three different families, the lonely neighbor and the doorman. Viewers connect with the neighbors and understand their decisions not to act upon the murder for they kept busy following their day-to-day struggles without the need to get involved in someone else's business. They deal with their personal lives the same way they deal with the murder -- if they don't talk about it, it didn't happen. Quite the opposite to the current theory of "if you see something, say something" having roamed around all over the City. I spent a month on the movie set as the official photographer for this movie and, not only did I learn a lot about dim, scary, homicide lighting sets, but had the pleasure of working with the fantastic team of Game7Films. The movie features: Samira Wiley (Orange is the New Black), Maria Dizza (While We're Young) and Michael Potts (the Wire) among others.

"Menashe" is the newest film by New York native Joshua Weinstein. The long-feature movie has been shortlisted at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah as well as shown at the Berlinale in Berlin, Germany and has has its debut in the City on July 28, 2017. The film is now distributed by A24 Production House. The feature, entirely in the original Yiddish language of the Haredi Shtetls in Russia and Poland, tells the story of an Orthodox Jew from a very religious community in Upstate New York called Skvira or New Square, Menashe, who, upon losing his wife to death, has his only son confiscated, for in the Jewish Law or Halacha, a single man is not to be given the responsibility to educated a son on his own. In a sequel of misadventures, Menashe tries to get her son's custody back despite his lack of a proper job and no desire of remarrying. The movie is nothing, but short of emotional overturns and morally-filled lessons for the religious and non. I was thrilled to have worked on the backstage photography of such movie for it is based on a true story of fatherly love and religious injustices, yet charged with the purest of emotions.

A collection of assignment and personal portrait work between New York City, Tel Aviv and Rome. I remember when I was little I posed for a portrait made of myself in paint. My grandparents thought it would be a wonderful idea to have a 6 years old girl sit for a 3 hours session in the same position while someone would paint her. Whether I was successful in that endeavor or not is beside the point. I try to make my subjects feel as much at easy as possible when they come in for a sitting. A sitting with a subject whether is an environmental portrait or an in-studio one, is a sharing experience and not a one-way street. I direct as much as they allow me to, but also leave a lot of freedom for the subject to feel free to interpret their movement and feeling as they most wish. I rarely succeed in taking a remarkable portrait if I have not gotten to know the subject just a little bit and established a line of contact beside the simple nature of me having to take a photo of them. Portraits are a slow practice of pure patience and connections, something I am enjoying more and more each day despite its deep challenges.

Fearless Girl is a bronze statue of a little girl sculpted by artist Kristen Vishbal. On the early morning of March 7, 2017 the little girl was placed in front of the Wall Street Bull, the iconic sculpture by Italian artist Arturo di Modica. The statue was commissioned by the edge fund State Street as part of their campaign #SHE to address gender equality in the workplace as well as to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8. Although the statue's placement and its meaning have brought up a lot of controversy, I had the honor and the pleasure to be the first photographer to take her portrait and people's reactions to its placement. Here are some more Fearless photographs for you to see how this little girl made everyone smile for a while in downtown Manhattan.

הַמְשַׁלֵּחַ מַעְיָנִים בַּנְּחָלִים בֵּין הָרִים יְהַלֵּכוּן God sends the springs into the valleys, between the mountains. (Psalms 104:10) Jerusalem was built on a 10 to 15 acres spur of limestone today known as City of David. The original city was established here because of Jerusalem’s only fresh water source—the Gihon Spring—and because the long, narrow hill is protected on three sides by deep valleys. We came to know that in the Iron age the City of David was served by three main water channels all interconnected and emanating from the Gihon Spring: The Siloam Channel, the Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the Warren’s Shaft. These complete waterworks of the ancient city were one of its strength to provide a regular supply of water for agriculture and domestic purposes not only in time of peace but also in time of war. About 2,500 years ago, the Canaan ancestors discovered water dripping out of the rock where water-permeable limestone lies atop the impermeable clay. They then took hammer and chisel and chipped away at the strata, coaxing a steady flow out of the rocks. The outcome is a man-made cave and tunnel, and a pool filled with delicious mountain water called Maayanot, or springs. Israelis, tourists and Palestinians, where accessible, spend their summer times bathing in these tubs of cold natural spring water and they do so in their own very original, personal style. Some of these springs are recognize as mikve as well, or holy bathing pools used by religious, orthodox Jewish men and women at different times to submerge before the Shabbat. They come there dressed with their Yeshiva clothing and often bathe only in their underwear. Some religious women will loose their head covering just for this or sometimes bath with it. Then you see the seminar school children who bring pick-nick and hookahs to smoke and spend all day long by the water source fussing around and playing with friends outside of the very strict summer school program. You also run into the Russian immigrant who is on summer vacation to visit her relatives who have moved to the Holy Land decades ago and she has been invited here to learn Hebrew in the summer time. Or else you see families with their children who take a study/work break to have a family dip before dinnertime. Lovers also come and take a break from the summer heat and sharing some private time by the water as well.

Ferragosto is Italians' Holy Month. It takes its name from Emperor's Augusts who used to take his holidays in mid August. Since then, Italians sleep in August. They sleep by the beach or after hiking mountain peaks. In the meantime, locals of smaller towns or villages entertain themselves with Palios, or gambling boat or horse races where both money and pride are up to grab. I have just started exploring *(with my camera) a couple of Palios this past summer. I remember spending summer days watching them as if this was a normal past-time, while this semi-tribal experience is truly a passionate celebration of people's love for their homes, their traditions and the places they are from. Fans and competitors are both as involved and as motivated to win as we are to watch them do so. Depeatched here you can see Il Palio di Siena, one of the most important horse races in Italy where "contrade" of the city of Siena fight until the last horse and jockey get to the finish line within a 90 second race around the city's main square and second, il Palio di Porto Santo Stefano, a rowing competition on old wooden boats called "gozzi" and There is nothing new here, nothing extraordinary unknown, it's simply my point of view of a "spaccato" of a life I was never meant to live, but always wished I could have been part of.

“I find every answers to my questions in Jane Austen’s books,” said Valeria Valenziano who sleeps with the English author’s entire book collection on her nightstand. “Every time I have nothing to read, I go back to her books; I randomly open one or two of them and start re-reading them to find comfort and answers.” Valenziano, 54, is originally from Brazil, but has been living and working in Rome, Italy as a traveling consultant since 1986. She is the founder of the cultural and ludic female Italian club “In the World Of Jane Austen.” The club includes about 40 to 80 participants to each event and was funded in 2009 as Valenziano wanted to open a collective dialogue with “her friend from a past life,” the English write Jane Austen she was so inspired by to other “Janeites,” women celebrating the life and books of the young author in the Italian capital with monthly organized events to re-live everything about their heroine's time. “I feel stunning in these dresses; if there ever was another life I belonged to those times, said Valenziano. “Without even knowing it, I often wear my hair up in the style of the time; my way of walking, standing, approaching others is different when I am wearing my gloves, my hats and my dresses.”

One of the first men I met at the Baobab Refugees camp in Rome in April 2018 was a South Sudanese man. His eyes were young. He said his name was Steven John and that he wanted to marry me. The proposal was so innocent I followed him into his tent and spoke to him briefly in a broken English that made no sense for all he spoke was Arabic. He said his life was at a moment now in which he felt “in between success and failure.” He made it out of the hell of Libya, into the freedom of Italy, but his chances of success or failure were identical at this particular moment. He never learned to read or write back in Sudan, but he wanted to do so now, maybe trying to reach Germany and maybe becoming a lawyer there. He would not stop until then. He left three days later without saying goodbye. He wanted to reach Ventimiglia where he would attempt to cross the border with France like many other refugees before him. I spent the next three months going back to the camp for what Steve told me seemed to be the reality of everyone else around: Transitory refugees and ‘returning’ ones either waiting for a train to somewhere else or for new document to stay in Italy and find a job somewhere, but leaving in limbo in this space "between success and failure." "Rome is the only city in Europe that does not have a center for refugees in transit," says Andrea Costa, the founder of the Baobab experience. Since the beginning back in the spring of 2015 when the Baobab was first created, he wanted to build a center to welcome refugees in the Italian capital "showing them they could be free at last" after all the have already been through. At his fullest they Baobab counted around 300 people and 200 tents. As the mist of summer approaches the numbers usually increase to about 400. Volunteers prepare about 18 kilos of food daily and provide tents and blankets to all refugees settling there. Water jugs and freshly made salads are provided by extra volunteers of the "No Name Kitchen," a group of Spaniards who spend a month here and a month in camps in Lesbos in Greece. Other aids come from private volunteers, the Red Cross and some Christian charities. Since 2017, the Italian government has not been giving anymore aids to the camp for it's technically an illegal settlement in a parking lot near an abandoned building that should not be occupied. Despite this, the Baobab continues to exists and thrives thanks to its volunteers and their chain of command infallible system. The camp was dismantled in November 2018 after a presumed rape and a series of police raids. Most of the migrants are now living on the streets of Rome. These are some of the refugees I met on my weekly visits at the Baobab in the month of April, May, June, September and October 2018. These are their "temporary homes" and their stories of resilience in a "space between success and failure."

"Hitting a woman for a man is as normal as eating a tortilla from a food stand on the way to work," said Karen Paz, 34, from San Pedro Sula in Honduras, revealing a scar from a burn on her left shoulder. "He wanted to burn my face, but my daughter started screaming when she saw him taking the pan with boiling butter. She pushed him, and so he aimed for the arm instead." Men can do anything to women in Honduras and the police hardly do anything about it, said Paz, while scrolling on her phone to show me more images of the burn and trying to find the police report she filed right after the attack. "They detained him for only 24 hours, and then he came back home. I couldn't stay there anymore; the next time he was going to kill me. My daughter could not witness that," she said. I met Paz near her tent inside the Benito Juárez Sports Center in Tijuana, Mexico, one of the sites where thousands of Central American migrants have taken shelter since arriving in two caravans in November 2018. Many of them had traveled the length of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico on foot and on the occasional bus and truck ride since departing from San Pedro Sula, Honduras — one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America — in October. Through my portrait series, from last Nov. 21 to Dec. 2, I documented Paz and 12 other women with their children who are survivors of domestic abuse and decided to flee their homes by joining one of last year's migrant caravans. For them it was a challenging, almost two-month journey to answer the question: What does it take for a Central American woman to give her children a better future? I listened to these women's testimonies and decided to portray them not as victims but as their most resilient selves, for no abuse can measure up to the courage and strength it took to carry their children across multiple countries for a shot at a better life by asking for asylum in the United States. There is a long wait south of the border. Most of the women and children I interviewed are asylum-seekers who are on a waiting list with more than 5,000 people. They initially took refuge at the Benito Juárez shelter, but many left for another site known as El Barretal. They were waiting in shelters for their turn to be heard, which could be months. Some of them started to think about crossing into the U.S. illegally instead of attempting to go through an official port of entry. Whether they know it or not, reaching the U.S. border was only half the battle. They must now contend with an immigration system that has made it more complicated to have their case considered for asylum. "I'm a survivor of violence already; I cannot bring my daughter back to go through that herself," said Paz. "I feel different here. I don't have someone who imposes his views and ways on me. I am not scared someone will come and attack me, like I used to be. I cannot go back."

It’s 4pm and lunchtime in Maria Lidia Meza Castro's new house in the U.S. The kids have just returned home from school and Castro is dishing out the chicken and rice she has spent the morning preparing. There is a bright, yellow light cutting through the living room window where everyone is sitting by the table eating frantically, stealing each other’s sodas or sweets, remnants of previous visitors. A few minutes later, the kids run off to play upstairs. The living room is left empty with grains of rice all over. The second floor takes on a life of its own: Scattered screams come from inside the closet as the children play hide and seek. Moments later whining tears over a Lego fight turn into the youngest hitting his sister in the face. She stands up and returns back into the kitchen where a pile of dishes awaits her before she has to wash the children and put all five of them to sleep. The next day will start again soon with a 6:00 am alarm. “Thank God we are safe here. I feel good here. I feel calm here,” said Castro. “I cannot go back to Honduras. I have too many problems there. I came here because this is a country where I believed I would be able to raise my children safely. Thank God they are already going to school!” I met Castro for the first time on November 21, 2018 on the road from Mexicali to Tijuana, Mexico. She was walking the last leg toward the U.S./Mexico border as one of the 5,000 plus Central American migrants traveling with the caravan. She told me she fled San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in October 2018 with her five youngest children, because her 13-year-old daughter had started to be threatened by the Maras, the local Mafia, who wanted her to sell drugs and start engaging in prostitution. Castro’s abusive husband had left three years prior and she’d been raising her children alone in Honduras since. Castro reached Tijuana last November. It was there that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers fired tear gas canisters at migrants rushing toward the U.S. border. Following the incident, Castro and a group of fellow migrants were escorted to the Otay Mesa port of entry with the assistance of the nonprofit group Families Belong Together and two Democratic members of Congress who also helped her apply for asylum. After making it through the border, she and her children were detained for five days before being released to live in the Washington area, close to where Castro has family. For the past four months Castro and her family have lived in a house in the suburbs of the country’s capital while her attorneys are starting to gather all the documentation necessary for her asylum plea, which could take up to 18 months to be granted. Until then, she can’t get a job because of her legal status and the immigration officer that pays weekly visits to her home advise her not to leave the house, fearful ICE agents may detain her. She is constantly monitored by an ISAP (Intensive Supervision Appearance Program) with an ankle bracelet.

Despite the terrorist threat, Israelis are becoming more likely to spend their holiday in the Egyptian peninsula, accessible by car. The minibus rolls south. At the exit of Taba in Egypt, he scorned the few luxurious hotels to continue his way on an arid road, bordered by the brown mountains of Sinai on one side and by the Red Sea on the other. Signs indicate the regular passage of camels. The only vehicles crossed are those of the Egyptian security forces patrolling in both directions and sometimes stop at the security posts, placed every kilometer. "It's because of Daesh [Arabic acronym of the Islamic State organization], " says Abu Kareem succinctly, the driver. After a sharp turn, the first huts finally appear, aligned at the edge of the turquoise water. Abu Kareem enters a sand track. On arrival, the person in charge, a young Bedouin dressed in a sarouel, his long hair brought back, launches a welcome shalom . Paradise beaches After ten years of interruption, between 2004 and 2014, because of a wave of attacks, and despite the persistent presence of terrorist groups active in the north and center of Egyptian Sinai, Israeli tourists are more and more numerous. to stay in its southern part. During the Passover (Jewish Easter) holidays this year, between April 19 and 27, more than 40,000 people crossed the Egyptian border crossing of Taba to reach the heavenly beaches of the south, according to the Israeli Authority of airports, responsible for border crossings: an increase of 35% compared to 2018. Attendance has a new peak during the summer, despite the suffocating heat. Several decades ago, only the fighters descended to walk the mountains and camp on the shoreline under the stars. Today, families and young people are also involved, attracted by the beauty of the place and the ridiculous prices, all just a few hours drive from Israel. -- Claire Bastier

At the end of this summer, I did an editorial campaign for Rockaways-based artist Anya Ferring to promote her hand-made/designed recycled plastic bottle swimwear for her new collection at ARTbutt. We both felt the need to have a playful time with real-life models who could wear the swimwear for a fun day at the beach as well as showing us the reversibility and colorful multi-faceted of the products in a studio lookbook-like scenario. All ARTbutt products are designed and thoughtfully produced in NYC using organic cottons and recycled or deadstock fabrics. ARTbutt waves the sustainable flag, implementing zero waste principles as much as possible from the start into the design process. Wherever possible our mantra remains: SHORTEN SUPPLY CHAIN! REGIONALIZE SUPPLY CHAIN! SCALE IT DOWN! Sustainability + design are Anya's two magic words inspiring her on this newest designs. You can view more of her products at https://www.artbutt.com/blogs/news.

I am growing fonder and fonder of my daily walks outside of confinement. I stroll leisurely up and down the hills surrounding the house I have been living in for the past 13 days, hoping for a sight of a person doing something outside so to engage, even if from afar -- even for a second. My camera faithfully around my left arm and my eyes open wide, trying to defeat boredom by looking for something slightly out of place. As perfectly fenced houses with pristine green driveways and geometrically potted flowers seem to be the only reality surrounding this place. And it sometimes drives me crazy. I long for a sense of disorder, for some sort of misplacement and disorganization. I feel uneasily unaccustomed to such sense of normalcy and structure. As nobody seems to be around, I let the spring scents guide me in my exploration. And here I am, driven by instinct of wanting to know, needing to explore and rediscover my resilience, our resilience. I need to walk, I am eager to see and smell and feel and detach from the sad reality I feel so intrinsically following me everywhere without a hint of interruption when all I wish for it is to disappear into a dream-like suspended realm where all this preoccupation and death would cease. This knowing that the world is on the brink of collapse thanks to a strange virus nobody seems to understand is exhausting. So, I engage in the luxury that everything around me is still pretty new and undiscovered and every direction I go leads to an unmarked road with infinite possibilities. My thoughts begin to slow down, my fears succumb to the sound of the birds awakening and I submerge into the deep forest surrounding me to find solace in this only sound. I cannot help but think about where I was supposed to be: living in Milan, Italy... if things had gone according to plan. But it’s seemingly unimportant now. Instead, I find myself (luckily) confining at the house of my best friend from college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Being here is a blessing wrapped in curse while my family is far and in danger back home in Italy. My blessing is being consumed by the beauty of this place; meanwhile I feel grateful that I escaped both Italy and New York.

The year Donald Trump was carried into office on a frothing anti-immigrant platform, there were an estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Roughly two-thirds had been here for more than a decade. Prior administrations had abysmal records, but generally acknowledged that the U.S. was enriched by the immigrants who chose to build their lives here. It’s why Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to some 3 million undocumented immigrants, why George W. Bush supported a path to legal citizenship, why Barack Obama — labeled “deporter-in-chief” after removing nearly 3 million people — also created DACA to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. But from the start, Trump embraced a rabid xenophobia once restricted to the furthest fringe in modern American politics, slashing refugee admissions, rescinding DACA, and ratcheting up arrests of longtime residents. All of that was before the pandemic hit, shutting down immigration courts, turning detention centers into viral tinderboxes, and giving the administration cover to institute some of its most draconian measures yet. A year ago, Rolling Stone began documenting the stories of immigrants around the country who are fighting removal, waylaid in detention centers or mired in endless court proceedings, with the stability and safety of their families hanging in the balance. (Last names have been withheld out of concern over retaliation.) “There was a moment in the story when we were in a church in Mississippi for the celebration of a Quinceanera, filled with Guatemalans dressed in their traditional clothing,” says photographer Federica Valabrega, herself an immigrant from Italy. “All I could hear was their Mayan dialect, and I remember having chills. I felt so included and so close to the immigrants reciting prayers in their own dialect to keep their identity intact. I felt ‘we were all immigrants’ in a foreign country trying to make ends meet, while never forgetting where we came from.”

We spent months not touching, not coming in contact with one another, we dared to even walk out unprepared in the eventuality we would run into someone unmasked and too handy who may want to ask us for the time way to close for our newly developed comfort. But then, Italy's door opened. And came June and then July and the summer time wiped the virus off the chart and these were the months when Italy registered the least number of Covid_19 contagious cases since the beginning of this Pandemic back in March. And hope was restored...or so we thought! A little before all of this happened, on May 3, 2020 while on my drive back from my hiding spot in North Carolina to New York City, I got a call from Annie Lerner, a fashion designer and creative director in Milano who had seen my previous work published and wanted to collaborate on a story on Rebirth, Renaissance, Rebuilt after all the Pandemic had taken from us. So, in the middle of the hottest, Italian summer I remember yet, after three-months preparation, I photographed these actors and actresses with some stunning clothing from Gucci, to Valentino to Prada for my very first Fashion Editorial for the Fall issue of D La repubblica, the Italian weekly women magazine. And I never had so much fun.

This is a personal project that explores the daily life of my partner Andrea and I while embracing his congenital heart condition and the new heart surgery he will undergo shortly. The project investigates a wide spectrum of events: from the role photography pays in his life helping him since an early age to see the world differently to his mental and physical struggles before his latest surgery and all the traumas in between from the previous three surgeries, all the way to the challenges of our relationship and how he and I feel about making plans when sometimes all seems so unknown. This project was born from my need to use photography to find a way of dealing with Andrea’s heart condition, which was going to become a bit my own as well when I decided to share my life with his about a year ago. Once again photographing his health issue as a reality helped me get closer to my fear and find a way to normalize and accept it. By using a lens as a space holder, I was able to acknowledge the reality around Andrea’s heart condition as just a fact I chose to embrace and build my life around, not just as a frightening truth completely out of my control. Aortic Coarctation would usually be a deadly heart condition, and it would have been so even in Andrea’s case if his grandfather wouldn’t have happened to be a concerned doctor who caught his grandson’s strange heartbeat when he was 7 years old. This condition can usually go undetected and lead to death. Andrea was lucky enough they caught it and his first open heart surgery came when he was 8. His aortic artery was rebuilt and enlarged, and he went about living a normal life until at 23 he had another major surgery that almost cost him his life: full reconstruction of his aortic arch and aortic valve replacement. Soon after surgery his sutures blew open and he had to undergo a third surgery to fix this where he almost bled to death. Andrea speaks of it all as a reality he is fully aware, yet extremely scared of. He never overcame the trauma of having been born “this way,” but he kept on living his life as if it was a normal one. He went on and played volleyball and water polo almost professionally, he graduated with a literature degree from the “Ca Foscari” University in Venice and started a career as a freelance photographer. Yet, even so, the feeling of being different from everyone else due to his heart problem altered his life severely. “The horrible feeling of having to lay down on those beds, so powerless, so impotent” something he has no control over, and he wishes it wasn’t so. “I have kept my thoughts to myself for a lifetime; it’s a mix of feeling you want to trust someone else with your own life or keep floating solo in the unknown,” he says back in June 2021 in Milan before his first visit to assess the degeneration of his current aortic valve. “These are all emotions that a ‘normal’ person may never know until the day of his death, but I’m so used to them.”

Il prurito dei san pietrini sotto i piedi fa sempre lo stesso effetto di scomodità e piacere allo stesso tempo, di vecchio e di nuovo, di passato e futuro insieme. Le Ottobrate Romane non sono mai state cosi` belle ed il Tevere e` già in piena, rigoglioso e verde intenso come non lo avevo mai visto. Tutt'attorno c'e` un silenzio che accompagna le mie corsette mattutine e che fa venir voglia quasi di urlare ogni tanto e di invocare alla nostra Roma dell'ormai lontano Febbraio 2020. Poi pero` mi calmo, riprendo fiato e rifletto che in fin dei conti, Roma così silenziosa, tranquilla e quasi ordinata, è uno spettacolo mozzafiato e sconosciuto e che vale la pena esplorare e capire e ricordare, perche ci mancherà non appena tutto tornerà ad una parvenza di semi-normalità. Rimpiangeremo questo silenzio immenso che trattiene in sè sia una bellezza devastante che un dolore ancora indescrivibile e che sarà difficile spiegare ai posteri. Passano mesi, un anno, un anno e mezzo ed io continuo a scattare questa Roma che da inquieta è diventata silente, ma che piano pianino vorrebbe tornare roboante. Intanto io giro e rigiro cercando radici piantate decenni fa che ormai sono altro che divelte dal tempo, ma forse, con tutto questo silenzio saranno più facili da ripiantare, forse reggeranno più a lungo e non si spezzeranno tanto facilmente... o che alla fine potrebbero semplicemente rinascere nuove e diverse e magari anche dar frutto a germogli migliori, o solo diversi. Allora, smetto di cercare dove conosco e inizio a perdermi nel caos ripristinato di una Roma mai vista: Furio Camillo, Torpignattare, Centocelle, Casilino, Via del Portonaccio, Tor bella Monaca conoscendo persone, luoghi, rovine trovando la pace al di fuori del battuto e per anni immortalato terreno natio. Mi imbatto appositamente nello stesso silenzio e calma imposti che avevo voluto fotografare all'inizio e che continuano ad attrarmi ancora ora. Perchè il ritmo che il mondo ha assunto in questo frangente di vita spezzata da un virus infame, è più normale, più umano e forse migliore per capire che c'è altro oltre la vita irrequieta incentrata solo sul lavoro. Ecco io desidero continuare a vedere il tempo lento, quello che passa e noi ce ne accorgiamo e ce lo godiamo. Non ho intenzione di fuggire in impicchiata come ho sempre fatto, perdendomi tutto del contorno, delle sfumature, dei dettagli. Voglio camminare e fotografare quello che ho attorno come le tartarughe.