What am I doing here?

A much abused cliché claims that “a photo says more than a thousand words.”

As a photographer, I beg to disagree.

Not because it’s not true but because it is not the point: photos tell stories but words explain what those stories are about. It doesn’t matter that images are truthful when truth itself can be misleading.

Any Instagram user knows or should know that what we see in photos is not necessarily what really happened. Any professional photojournalist knows that the hardest -and trickiest- part of the job is not shooting the photos but it’s selecting the shots so that they give a sense of what they witnessed, then writing accurate and unbiased captions.

When people ask me if I am a photographer, I half-jokingly reply “yes but I can also read and write” because a common misconception about the profession is that you just take pics of what you see -perhaps also dodging bullets or eating cake, if you’re a war reporter or a wedding photographer- but you know and care of little else. Reality is of course different but my point is that being framed into one definition makes me feel claustrophobic.

My personal story should explain it.

I grew up in Europe, but not the real Europe. I lived a couple of years in Africa, but not the real Africa, then a few months in America but neither of the real Americas and later I moved to live in Asia, but not the real Asia.

Do you see the trend? Fitting in was never my thing: after narrowly dodging the fate of every male ancestor and refusing to become a ship captain like them, I managed to live on the most convoluted path that was possible to imagine between the 20th and the 21st centuries.

Only two things were consistent among all the life changes and twists: I always found new ways to tell my stories and I was never possibly bored.

When it looks like nothing is happening and new changes are impending but late, it’s time to enjoy the truce and to be inspired by past stories to let the new ones begin.

Here I will share the words to explain the photos that I take and what I think that I have learned from them. It will mostly be about real stories that I hope will inspire readers and fellow travelers, plus some occasional fictional tales, stories that could have happened but never did.

Please feel free to get in touch to ask anything or to trash my writing or my photos, it’s always healthy to get feedback. Just remember that whatever you will read here will be from my humble point of view, with no pretension of grandeur or extraordinary wisdom. As one of my mentors said, “if it’s bad, just don’t take it seriously.”