On my Torpignattara

Torpignattara. Sarbojonin Hindu Puja Mondir. Rome, any day

Years ago this room, in a small street in Torpignattara, housed the Dong Fang Chinese language school. I went there several times to photograph their lessons and the end-of-term party with the little Chinese students.

It was like entering through a small crack into a world of incomprehensible and joyful sounds. I was happy to go there because I have always liked schools where children are taught their mother tongue.

 

Now, there is the Hindu temple kitchen. But there are still signs hanging on the walls with writings in Chinese characters.

Now the kitchen has been made better, up to standard, and all signs of its previous life have almost disappeared. But for years it was simply a place to cram unused things and prepare rice for the festivals in large basins. The drawings of the Chinese children, the cardboard ideograms, and, at the corner of the walls, some cardboard boxes with memories of school festivals still hung on the walls.

I am grateful to Photography because it has been a wonderful means of getting closer to what I love and helping me understand it.

As the monk Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the most famous Buddhist spiritual teachers in the world writes: “True love requires a deep understanding. Actually, love is another name for understanding. If you don't understand you cannot love properly. Without understanding your love will only make the other person suffer.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, “My home is the world”)

Photography, understanding, and love for me are inextricably intertwined.

 

And memory. I take pictures not to forget the feelings I feel, what excites me, and what made me cry and smile.

Forgetting what has touched our hearts is a subtle torture.

The images are pins planted on those emotions as on the stuffed bodies of butterflies.

When people ask me why I love Torpignattara so much, I could give a long list of reasons. But I think this photograph is a good example: it's not just a journey through different cultures, which are precisely the ones I'm passionate about, but it's also a temporal stratification. Like the circles inside tree trunks.

And I am standing, in front of this slow change.

The affective part of this memory is its colors and faces.

 

Torpignattara will always be my valo-basha, ভালবাসা

The Good Home: Love.

Rome, April 2017. Photo: Yuliani Liputo

Italian version