Again on the Chinese New Year: Zhou and Joy – Part Three

"Destroy the pain of others, 

because it hurts like our own.”

(Chinese proverb)

 

Torpignattara. Rome – 7 January 2012

 

It's amazing how the mind can totally forget some past events, and I'm not talking about events in childhood, but also just ten years old.

Of course, two years of chemotherapy didn't help me; the doctors warned me that I might have some minor disturbs or some physical or memory damage. Each body reacts differently and unpredictably to that poison: my father has no sense of smell and I have a memory that looks like Swiss cheese, and some things, like numbers, I just can't memorize them.

So I know I don't have to blame myself for this memory weakness.

But I am still stunned by what I told about Zhou and Joy Zen, in the first part, because I had totally forgotten how things really went.

Not what I wrote was wrong, but a whole part that was the heart of what happened to me was missing, namely Lucia King's message and becoming the official photographer of the Soong Ching Ling Foundation of Italy.

 

After writing it, I tried to find that old post, without much confidence because it was nine years ago.

But in the end, I succeeded. I found the post and also all the photographs taken, and like a dam collapsing under the impetus of the rising water I was invested with real memories: all in the smallest details.

So I thought it was a story I needed to tell better because as I wrote in the first part, it can be useful.

First of all, the post I wrote the same evening that I returned home:

 

How to find yourself from being a mere spectator to the living flesh of pain...

Today I went to photograph the street where the Chinese father lived with the child killed in Torpignattara. There were a lot of flowers and candles. Then three Chinese women came out of the door and one of them burst into tears. I immediately stopped taking pictures and followed them.

When the woman started to feel bad, I brought her a glass of water but nothing, she just repeated “Joy”.

No one spoke Italian but it became clear that she was the (very young) grandmother of the killed nine-month-old girl.

She was about to faint and I held her up. With the help of the other two Chinese and some Italian ladies, we took her home.

The door closed behind me, and suddenly I was catapulted into “the pain”.

That which has no meaning but is pure 'signifier'.

The other women lay her over on the bed.

She repeated like a mantra only the girl's name and she cried.

There was a roll of toilet paper on the table for tears, a few photos, a Chinese calendar.

Uneaten food under the white net that Asians use to protect food from insects.

I was there motionless, they looked at me through tears like a foreign body. A stranger.

I tried to tell one of them that on Tuesday two thousand Chinese would come for them, and many Italians and who knows how many others or perhaps none. What does it matter to that grandmother who hasn't seen the bodies yet...

In these moments you understand the limits of photography, you can't, you shouldn't...

You would also like to close your eyes so as not to penetrate that pain that cannot be understood.

I said goodbye to one of them and ran away.

I will have that mantra of 'Joy' in my mind for who knows how long.

I hope there will be a lot of people that day, but does it matter?

I hope so.

And now who takes that pain away from me?

A kiss to those who live so far from me, never been so close.

As Wittgenstein said: “On what cannot be talked about, one must be silent”.

Never were words more true...

 

Torpignattara. Rome – 7 January 2012

 

This was what I wrote, posting a photograph of the flowers and candles on the ground, on 7 January 2012.

How much anger and sadness it made me when I cannot remember that moment so intense.

It was truly an incredible coincidence to be under the front door just as the grandmother came down to see the flowers and the messages.

I saw her almost faint in front of me, because of the pain. I tried to give her some water but nothing, then two young relatives asked me to help to take her home.

Three of us carried her up to her house.

 

Now, why is this related to the subject of photography?

Because in those days that neighborhood was full of photojournalists. Everyone – and I put myself also into it – was looking for the symbolic shot, the one that could best describe the mood of the city or of the family.

Suddenly I was in that scene, which I now remember perfectly, as a Flemish painting, with the dim red lights of the candles, with the grandmother lying on the bed, and the two women sitting by her side crying. Without them paying any attention to me.

This meant that I could take a photograph like no other. The aesthetically perfect image of pain. From within.

But there must be a limit. A threshold that it is preferable not to cross.

An ethical step that separates us from the precipice.

So I didn't take that photograph. I put my camera away, tried to say an unheard goodbye, and walked away.

Really touched deep inside.

 

These were the words that prompted Lucia King to write to me in private, inviting me to the funeral procession which was held on January 9, with hundreds of people who came from Piazza Vittorio to the family home.

On that occasion, I met Lucia, who also invited me to the funeral home the next day.

All this just known.

I really felt inside a hurricane of emotions and events.

 

Vittorio Square. Lucia King interviewed. Rome – 9 January 2012

 

Torpignattara. Rome – 9 January 2012

 

That day, too, gave me two moments to tell.

Obviously, only family members were allowed into the funeral home. At the exit, in the Piazzale del Verano, there was a crowd of photojournalists, at least thirty, all waiting for the coffins to come out with the relatives of the victims.

It must be said that the photojournalists in Rome all know each other, I was among them who minded my own business, I had started photographing a few years ago and I have never been one who squeezes or tugs to get the best photo, I think that the work of others must be respected, and I wasn't there to take the photograph away to pay the rent.

When the two coffins began to come out to reach the cemetery across the street the photographers started to get excited, especially when the young mother arrived crying near Joy's little white coffin.

I just took a picture of her that some reporters pushed me hard, telling me I wasn't from any news magazines so I had to step aside.

It was then that the mother could not stand the pain and fell on the asphalt, crying with screams from the soul.

My heart froze: a heartbreaking scene.

It seemed cruel to me to photograph that mother like that but it was at that moment that the photographers went further to get as close as possible to portrait her.

I felt disgusted. But just the time to be able to think something that one of the Chinese boys who was with the family started yelling at the photographers to leave her alone, but nothing, as if no one had talked and shot at the mother on the ground. It was a moment, that boy jumped and with a martial arts kick hit one of the photographers.

I do not hide my satisfaction.

Not only that but then the funeral procession started towards the entrance of the cemetery to bury the coffins. I was next to Lucia King, behind us all the photographers. At the door of the large cultural cemetery, a Chinese man from the security said that no one could enter, only family members and no journalists.

I remember that while I was walking I felt my camera bag being pulled: it was one of those photojournalists who said scornfully: “Didn't you hear what they said?”

Then Lucia King turned to them and said: “He is with us”.

 

Rome – 10 January 2012

 

I felt truly honored. They only asked me – out of respect – not to take any pictures of that moment.

So, I often tell, how the last photograph I could never take was that of one of Zhou's relatives who lit a cigarette, right in front of the niche where the young father's coffin had been cemented. He took two, three shots and then placed them beside his photograph.

They explained to me that Zhou was a heavy smoker, and that was his last cigarette.

 

It seems naïve to draw moral from stories, but certainly, that week was loaded with events and emotions for me. As well as lessons.

The most important is that one missed photograph can open the opportunity to a thousand others.

All my failed attempts to enter the Roman Chinese community have been rewarded precisely by not having taken photographers.

For two years all doors closed and then within two weeks I was on stage photographing the artists who arrived from China for the great New Year's Eve in Piazza del Popolo.

I was at dinner in the restaurant, in the evening,  to celebrate with the whole delegation from China before their return.

But above all, I was able to remember the profound meaning of those few words: “He is with us”.

 

So, as I have often said during all my photography courses, it's okay to try to do the photography that seems to us most important, it's okay to insist and be stubborn in what we want to achieve but never force too much the pace. It is better not to cross that threshold.

A renunciation is often the gateway to abundance.

Just like in those Zen stories, where emptiness is nothing more than the distorted reflection of fullness.

 

I had lost it in my memory. This Chinese New Year that could not be celebrated, empty, gave me back the fullness of those emotions.

 

One thought again to Zhou and Joy.

Zhou and Joy

 

• On the Chinese New Year – Part One 
• On the Chinese New Year – Part Two 

Italian version