I wanted to be a singer
and instead I’m here to try the
accounting as I did to become one
rather, he photographs how it happened
I think everything started with mine
food disorders
I fell ill at the age of 14 15
I do not remember it yet with years
precision but there are so many
many pieces of that period that that
I still remember very confused
and a teenager and like any teenager
I looked at myself and I did not like it but it was not
just do not like me on a physical level
it was something different it was as if
all of a sudden I did not recognize myself
from the image that I saw of myself I believe that
adolescence
on the one hand to the moment when we begin
to see us a bit like a first version
of definitive human being is what
I saw I did not correspond, but I think
that just this mismatch
this sort of detachment that was there
between me and the image I saw of me
has played a fundamental part in
let me then approach the activities
photography arrived a few years later
on the shelves of the municipal library
di reggio emilia the city in which they are
born and the first person I started
I was photographed and photographed
basically then I will tell you adding up
it has practically never stopped fast
forward I enroll in the dans I graduate
attends a school of photography me
diploma not really in this order e
they decide certain point to be ready
to try and make my first true
photographic project and then decided to
work on something that I knew a lot
good eating disorders
I
as a teenager I wanted to lose weight though
take this term lose weight
as a metaphor
in reality I wanted to become the person
that I felt I had to become and up to here
just that I wanted to become one
immediately the time it was supposed to
pass between that me so imperfect
that I was then and that average slice that
of course it would have been in the future
it was a time that had to pass the most
as fast as possible
it was a useless time once
distressing empty time
contrary to the time of photography
photography fills the time for me
when you have a camera at the
neck every moment is potentially a
dense moment of important significance
and unrepeatable
strong of this of this instrument
the machine’s own material
photographic but also mental
I left for e plate since 2006
palace residence francisci which is one
of the main centers in Italy for the
treatment of eating disorders
and yet I remember that it comes
organized this plenary meeting with
all operators and doctors
patients I remember these twenty pairs of
eyes that looked at me in terror
because it was a stranger, and most importantly the
strange with a camera
on the other hand I was terrified how much
in fact, after having spoken in short
presented and so on for a week
ten days did not dare to
do not even take a picture
in return, spending time with the
girls watched television played
cards
I learned how to make hideous shops
knit but until one day
he came to this girl told me
paganism these photos when you start to
them
and then I started this project that
to the title of days odd days from
a piece of ludovico einaudi that
I listened at the time obsessively and
at the time I did not even know it
photography nor that this work would be
lasted more than three years that they
photography would have become mine
profession or even that in substance
this work would have been more than one
simple craft but it would have been too
for me it is a form of understanding of
myself and therapy sometimes I call it
I do not know if it happens to you, but it’s me
it happened that we were there
of meetings in my working life
and they are not however say work
that have marked important points
of my journey one of these meetings
it was the one with simona simona
met in 2008 at palazzo francisci
where she had been hospitalized and roma summer
toa I see the center full slowly
of patients and simona at the beginning i
hit by its physicality was high and
still very beautiful this hair
thick black these huge eyes and
skinny skinny skinny to death recall
he was always sitting on the sidelines and also
the other patients are as if they were struggling
road approaching her there was something in it
this halo of extreme suffering that
he wore on him that attracted and
rejected the attention speak to the
same time I put myself different
days before deciding to approach it
and ask her if she wanted to get one
photograph and she replied with that
firmness that sweetness that over the years
then I learned to know he said yes
but not today tomorrow and I wish you
imagine something beautiful
ok spend the rest of the day a
try to think what I could do with
nice in that situation
the next morning I wake up and stop me
from a florist and bought lilies
because in a kind of greeting
I wished that from his long arms
gnarled some point could
bloom of flowers and this was it
the beginning of a friendship that soon
it will be on its tenth anniversary
in the meantime I have not stopped
photographing myself was like this
looking out of me forced me
violently somehow to look
so many things inside me again
I thought I knew about me I had to
see them again and change it and thanks to
this work
after these three four years of work
on eating disorders I felt that the
push that had led me to work
on this subject it was running out and
enters a phase of tremendous
confusion in the meantime photography
mine had become my job
profession asked me if he wanted to
going to the gaza strip is like this
taken from the enthusiasm and the confusion
he says yes without thinking about it and in the bow
literally of a few days me
I found myself in a war zone
I was terrified again I did not know that
what to expect
maybe it is not quite prepared to
go there for active hop from a thought I
I was the first woman of mine
family not having lived the war
my grandmother my grandmothers have lived the
before and the second world war
my mother was born at the end of the
World War II I had only one
heard about it
yet from a while as if this
history did not even flow into the DNA of the
my family and in my own
so I decided to work not on the first
line therefore not to document the first
line but stay home stay at home
with women and see what normality
if there was a normality but which
normality one could aspire into one
situation of a conflict like this
heinous and so long term as
the Palestinian Israeli conflict
I thought if he was looking for a familiarity if
He was looking for a match with mine
life and with my experience
I could have found it everywhere it kneaded
look for it and so for example with obi wan
he lost everything during the operation
lead melted military operation
Israeli in 2009 had lost the house
he had lost a 9-year-old son and brien
was killed and has a year away
the first time I met her again
he lived with the other five children and the
husband in a tent in the place where
he stood in the evening under his house
we could think it was there I’m one
of the most distant women like
cultural background as life choices
religion we speak of we spoke languages
different
children all you can
imagine no
and instead cuba does I find it very well
I went to visit him many many times in the
course of these years like
he found at home the admiration was one
person is an extremely person
strong if there is one thing I learned
from these trips from this trip is
been a while to abandon a series of
stereotypes I had about others
on the other but also on me the most
sometimes it happened to me where
he thought he was finding differences
insurmountable
in reality I found great ones
fast forward likeness 2015 itself
thing in kenya at a certain point meeting
natasha natasha a Kenyan girl from
13 years at the time
what could I ever have in common
with this girl
I met her in a school at an encore
a few hours drive from nairobi
where she had been had she sought refuge afterwards
be escaped from mutilation
genital from his family that he wanted
practice genital mutilation for
then as often happens in these countries
usually marry her to a man but
also much older than her and
natasha had escaped then it was over
living the streets of the Nairobi and then it was
was taken by a family who had it
taking service but in reality it was more
a slave that it is a real
his own domestic collaborator came
harassed molested and so on
even precisely it did not come did not come
saved and brought within this
school that has a section for them
little girls who run away from home and
thatcher was very interested in me
learned a bit in English on the street and
so he had decided to take the
task of being my guide
inside the school and followed me
everywhere he showed me everything and wanted
know everything that I did like
how raffa to be a photographer like the
travel and so on then once
returned to Italy has decided to pay the
school fees
in short, it can be said that I bring the
I work at home but it’s a fortune it’s a
huge privilege when I was 18 years old
I wanted to be a singer like that
enrolled in a course with sainkho
namtchylak who is a Siberian singer
of the republic of tuva really you
I love very much and the second third
young seminar I went to her very high
or the fabric to become a singer
I can do it I looked twenty years
and he told me something that sounds a bit like
you Westerners always think
only to the result and maria il
path and I was very bad
clearly, in fact, even today
I remember perfectly that day
I do not know if I understood exactly what
He wanted to tell me but I never am
forgot maybe slowly I started
to understand it thanks to my work
my work forces me to look
it forces me to look at others
forces me to look does not allow me to
stay as I told you inside
stereotypes I had that either willy o
lent on the other and on me and maybe
maybe all these women I have
known wafa natascha simona e
many others are pieces of
the one I wanted as a teenager
become and perhaps the story of mine
work is a very small piece too
of the history of my slow slow
healing thanks
[Applause]
”
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