2018 is with us for a few days now, but I thought I’d do a post about 2017. I can say in all honesty I am happy this year was in my life. It was a year of discovery, meaningful meetings (grazie dal cuore meravigliosa Michelle) and breathtaking experiences I will keep in my heart as the treasures that they are.

Photographically speaking it was a year of rebirth, if you will. Especially the last few weeks of 2017. And so this post will be about that.

Soundtrack: Bruno Bavota “Passengers” (click here to listen)

Actually, come to think of it, everything started way back when I still worshiped at the church of Canon. I liked taking pictures then, but it was never a joy. Well, it was a joy, but… not completely, if you know what I mean. I was infatuated with photography, but I wasn’t in love. So many things irritated me and boxed me in. Love and first sense of freedom came with my first Fuji camera in 2014. Yes, along with the first whispers of my photographic voice I found true love in photography. I finally started understanding what it is that I like and want to photograph and to my absolute delight I realized I can do it all in camera, because Fuji cameras spare me the need to spend hours in post production, which is a pretty important thing for me.

2014 was the year my true photographic voice made itself known for the first time. I went dark that year. Very dark. Literally and figuratively. Not that I changed, no. I’ve always been this way, ever since I was a kid. It’s just that I had finally let go. I finally dared to take my first steps into that place Ive always known to exist in me, but that I had ignored all this time because I was scared of it. Ive spent most of my life being the way I was “supposed” to be – docile, sweet girl full of light who was all positive and wanted to make everyone happy even at her own expense. But then I dared to step out of that frame I had been put in and dove head first into said darkness of mine and enjoyed every second of it, and the world got a dose of true me for the first time and let me tell you – some were shocked. I began to hear comments raging from “do you walk around only at night?” to expressions of concern about my mental well-being, but that’s what happens when someone tries to get out of the gray, safe, boring box where they have been stuck to pursue a path that is not comfortable for the infamous “others” in one way or another. I’ve been urged to make my images lighter, more minimalistic and streamlined, but I won’t, because that is not me. I see the world in a different way. I see it dramatic, I see it cinematic, I see it through a prism of fantasy and dreams .

This November my current Fuji camera and Venezia met again, and something happened. I started speaking more coherent sentences using my photographic voice, if you will. Mind you, it still has a long way to go to develop and become what it can truly be, but its there.

I went through a period in my life when I was literally dead inside, because of things that had happened, and that state of my soul lasted for many years. I can sincerely say that photography was one of the things that saved me. It saved me and then became my obsession at first and then turned into a true passion. I remember when I felt it in its full force. It was on a windy midday last November when I stood on Piazza San Marco, pointing my camera at a puddle, with wind whipping my hair around so it became a sort of a curtain between me and the world, while everyone around me was gawking at the beautiful buildings around them, and for a blissful moment of wicked delight I felt transported to some other reality where the only thing that mattered was that light, that puddle with the reflection it held in it, my vision of it and my camera as my instrument to capture it. That’s when I felt I was doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

And no, I do not want photography to become my profession. I want it to stay my escape. I want to be able to photograph what I want and exactly the way I want to photograph said something. I don’t want the way I express myself in photography to be influenced by likes on social media, somebody’s direction or other things like that. I want it to be and remain a true expression of myself.

Soundtrack: Skillet “I want to live” (click here to listen)

photography thoughts