Often they ask us why we do the work we do. Every one of us has a reason, a
personal motive, circumstantial reasons. When they ask me why I am a photographer, I do not know how to reply in two words, there is not only one reason why I do photography, nor is there one which is more important than another.I have followed this path above all because I am still fascinated and I should say captivated by the adventurous and romantic stories of my father. He was a.courageous photoreporter and passionate lover of Africa in the 60's and of South America in the 70's. But I am a photographer also because I like to satisfy my curiosity whevever I go, enter into a group of persons to discover what is at the heart. I like to recount what I see.
A photograph is an adventure, romanticism, research, discovery. If I had been born fifty years ago I should have defintely been an explorer. I have been saying this to myself for twenty years now.I should have liked to travel in search of new places, human types, new cultures, new flavours, to live the itinerary of research , exploration, difficulties, in order to arrive finally at a goal. Living it in first person, then recounting it to those who were not there. The photographer is the explorer of our times, in which man travels inside man and outside man in search of new places, new ideas on which to reflect; He does it through researching a symbolic language, consisting of volumes and colours. He does it through a lens which enlarges a portion of the world. His is the choice of directing a journey.
The journey has always little to do with the objective motivations which we construct around it, but rather a need to live internally and externally. There is an interior motive which determines our curiosity towards things, places and persons. There is an interior motive which unconsciously pushes a photographer to seek images in the world, which in reality he has inside himself. The camera enables him extract them, and render them objective. The photograph gives me all this, gives me the sense of interior exploration, sense of liberty that nothing else gives me.
Today I photograph because I can't help it. I could not imagine a day, a life without images to snap, or to look at or to think about.I photograph because the camera drags me behind it in search of new things to know, to discover, to picture. Every time I discover something of myself. Every story is a testing of my own limits, approach, vision, and conclusion. Words can lie if they are well constructed, but images cannot keep quiet about the feelings of the photographer confronting the story he tells. Every story is a new story, not so much for the others who look at the photograph, but for those who take it because every time it is a verification of interior co-ordinates.
There are so many images in the framework of one life, so many that are imprinted in the memory. Many of these , however, we do not manage to snap, because they are those on the edges of the virtual map within which we travel. My father, when I began to picture the world, said to me: "remember that the most beautiful images are those we shall never capture, those that we carry inside us." He was right.
