In Waiting

Following an accident occurred to my mother, I come back to live in my hometown, a small village North of Naples, Southern Italy, from which I escaped when young. The decline of this part of the country is so bad, and living conditions have deteriorated so far, that religion represents the only way to bear the burden. Aware that the situation won’t improve, people are waiting for a miracle. Religious icons are everywhere, in the streets, in the houses, at the hospital. There too, its conditions are such that everything is entrusted to miracles and not to doctors. I wait for her recovery but I see my mother’s condition worsening until she enters into a coma, and I can’t get any credible information from doctors about her situation. My waiting comes soon to a standstill. My life is suspended throughout the long hours spent in the hospital and in my mother’s empty flat. Her collection of family pictures, from the intense black and white shots when she was young during the war to the early colours pictures of the ‘80s, helps me spending time. Some deteriorated, some other badly framed, but all of them trigger joyful moments with the help of the stories she used to tell me. During the year with my mother, I recorded in my images the hospital where I spent endless days, her empty flat, the religious icons spreading everywhere, her coma, and, lastly, her death.