See me, touch me, feel me.... heal me. Emotional transfer.

During this period of isolation and change due to COVID, many have felt lonely. All human beings have few things in common, a deeply rooted need to be understood, listened to and forgiven. Emotional loneliness leads to the weakening of connections with reality and in the long run to the desertification of feelings and apathy. Virtual relationships cannot replace those in person. This project aims to remind people how to listen to life stories of unknown strangers and should stimulate an emotional transfer in viewers. It is so important not to lose this empathic ability without which the best part of our society and culture wouldn't be created. This project includes only candid photos from Southern Italy (Calabria and Sicily) where people don’t like to talk much about their lives (neither to be photographed) but often their faces narrate everything for them. During many public events and religious celebrations, I was able to get close enough to reach a sense of empathy and a feeling to be in the right moment and right place. This close distance and public manifestations are like a far, unreal dream now and I'm not sure if the present social situation will permit such a way of photographing anymore. People got even more suspicious. Each of these photos is a separate essay without any internal connections, apart from geographical connotations. The environment that did shapes the faces of my characters often offered them the most uncomfortable living conditions, so I wish to give them back “the voice” that local habitual behaviors ( linked also with mafia lifestyle) negated them and try to listen to their stories. I'm fascinated by the metaphysics of everyday life, so I try to elevate it to epic, theatrical dimensions, searching catharsis (in this case the instants of deep understanding and compassion) in me and hopefully in viewers too. Pirandello said; "“Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!” This photo selection is a part of a bigger project.