Archaeology of A Passion

“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
(Haruki Murakami)  

“Filipino girl”. Vittorio Square. ROME – 27 June 2009

 

I tried to do a search, an excavation in the memory, looking for a hypothetical first photograph from which everything started.

I do not mean the hundreds of photographs that each of us takes in his adolescence, the summer by the sea or while traveling. I mean a photo that could be the cornerstone of the building that is me now.

I call this “archaelogy of a passion”. Which is more than just a passion for photography, but for everything that has revolved around it, even now: The passion for other cultures, other peoples, languages: that is, all that I am at the moment.

My friend and talented photographer Fabio Moscatelli called this trip in memory and in ourselves “Nostos”, or the return, in Greek. The longing to go back to what we were. I really like this word.

 

I found this portrait of a Filipino girl, made in June 2009.

I remember those were for me the first shots I took with my most decent camera, a Sony bridge with a movable screen, with which I shot without looking through the viewfinder, from above, like an old cockpit camera.

At the time, I was following my ex-girlfriend who went shopping every Saturday morning at the market in Piazza Vittorio. On that day it was practically impossible to find Italians, almost 90% of the people who went to the market were foreigners in search of their typical products, of their countries.

The market in Piazza Vittorio is very large and has a square plan, with a square marble rise in the center where you can sit. I spent there, sitting, the time she needed to do the shopping. Usually an hour.

 

That was my test case for my first photos. I waited, looked all the people who passed me and photographed. Aiming at the viewfinder or secretly.

I was, and still am, fascinated by the diversity of the somatic traits. I trained my eyes to distinguish Chinese women from Filipino women, Indian women from Bangladeshis.

I kept going there for years, then I got bored and looked for something else.

But I always remember those Saturdays with immense pleasure and tenderness. It was 2009. I was still working for a marketing company and that was my hobby; I had already stopped writing for many years.

Then I almost always shot directly in black and white, perhaps thinking that the photographs were more artistic.

The following year I would have fallen in love forever with the bright colors of Bangladesh women's clothes, but that's another story that many of you already know well.

The memories are confused, lost in time, but I think this little girl was sitting in front of me, with the people walking in front of us. I forgot if the mother was close to her or was waiting for her. I was sure she was Filipino, and I am rarely wrong in this.

She looks at me and I shoot. Two, three photographs. I really like this photograph.

My first photographic exhibition was in a bookshop, a few years later, with the faces of foreigners, and she was there; her face could not be missing.

Now I have recovered it, in the old files, when I wanted to write this article.

I have no doubt in choosing it as the first stone.

Why?

 

Because every time I look at it, I am kidnapped by her gaze, with her melting pot of emotions.

She knows I am looking at her, and sees the camera pointed at her, but from below: she is not sure that I am photographing her.

Her eyes, her mouth, her eyebrows, every muscle on her face are a question mark.

Immediately after that photograph she will return to her thoughts, always with a sweet and melancholy face.

 

“Filipino girl”. Vittorio Square. ROME – 27 June 2009 

I chose this image because in my opinion it contains a lot of the charm and mystery that faces have always exerted on me, especially foreign faces. But at that time everything was still unconscious, like inside a chrysalis.

I loved to watch that photo continuously but without understanding the real reason. Its strength.

Not that it is a masterpiece, it's a simple photograph, which has part of its charm even in the light behind which gives a suffused and angelic halo to her face, but this was absolutely not sought.

 

I like to think that even now, after all these years, certain faces and looks can become a question for those who observe them.

Who am I? Who are you looking at me?

What bond unites us in this second of shot?

Where will you take me?

What will change in our lives after our meeting?

 

Maybe none of this. 

We will see the photo for a moment and forget it forever.

Maybe not.

I want to believe that something happens.

After all, after eleven years, I am still here watching her enigmatic gaze.

 

“Filipino girl”. ROME – 27 June 2009 

 

Fabio Moscatelli: "Nostos" (2019)

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• Number 100 
• Postcards from The Philippines

Italian version