Gioele

Gioele likes changing his shoes, he likes water and horses, and he loves feeding his plastic seals. He is a child of few words. On his diary, he writes long and intricate tales about mysterious animals, pet lions, anaconda and “spider-wolf”. He draws cooking ducks and zebras with colourful strips, but often he crumple his drawings up so that nobody could see them. There is a world inside Gioele, even if nobody can get in it. Gioele is an autistic child, this means like to be in a house without entrance: if you are inside of it you cannot come out, if you are outside you don't know how to get into. however he stays behind the windows, looking, watching. From there, he takes pictures of the world as it appears to him: too close, too far, often in a slow movement, sometimes as a friend, sometimes incomprehensible. Gioele also likes being seen by the others, this project was born for this purpose. From an exchange of points of view between a photographer who wants to approach to a difficult personality and a young boy who wants to comunicate with the world outside difficult to reach. Photography becomes a tool of mutual understanding, a visual and visionary land to meet up, and hang out voiceless emotions and sensations. But photography is also the thread of a training story. A complex and soft training: not only the one about an eleven year old boy, who is going to become a man, but also a special human being comparing himself with a world that perceives him as something different and alien. Autism is considered by the International Scientific Community as a brain disorder. Today the causes are partially unknown, and its origin is subject to some different and contraddictory interpretations. Generally the symptoms are detectable during the 2nd or 3th year of age, and come out with deep changes of verbal and not verbal communication, of social interplay, of imagination or fields of interest. Often autistic people have behavioral disorders, in heavy cases they do repetitive actions, unusual, self-destructive or harmful to someone else. Going beyond the romantic interpretations, often associated with the idea of autism suggested by cinema and literature, not always behind the cover of this disease is hidden a genius, not always behind stereotyped actions, endless sounds repeated again and again, rituals renewed obsessively is hidden an amazing and mysterious talent. For many kids to eat at the table with the family, to take a walk, to learn to dress, is a great achievement, for Gioele too it is an achivement to speak without swearing or to answer a simple question. So this project represents the voyage of a young boy who is looking for his normality and in the meantime the discovery of his few skills. It is the diary of a change and of a research: research of an identity, of a place in the world, of a way to communicate, of a relationship with the others. Gioele wants all that we want, even if his goals are more difficult to be achieved than ours. The end of his childhood and the beginning of his adolescence is a step even more delicate, that brings with it even more bitter conflicts. From the relationship with a body that is going to change, to the difficulties of socialization,from the lack of organized communities in a suburban area, to the dialogue often conflictual with the institutions and with the family, the problems of a normal teenager are amplified and emphasized in an autistic boy. For all these reasons, the following of his growth through a camera becomes a jouney of knowledge and of analysis about the mistery of his desease and the mistery of our identity .