Outsiders
Photography for me is to oppose the Infinite Other, without prerequisites, without a priori admissions, beyond classified stereotypes.
Stereotypes that played a part in my life, turning into the path which eventually led me to these people. Among the ‘’roma’’ of Ayia Anna, the dominant Jimmy, the leader, hesitantly at first, guided me through the lives of these people. ’’Roma’’ or ‘’gipsies’’, they narrate themselves in a place and time which is set on the OUTSIDE. A stranger in the beginning and later a ‘’balamo’’, I shared their table, their music and finally their joys. Out of society, marginalised, they draw life from the rubbish of the city and make up their own stories. They fall in love, they laugh, they strive, they exist under the foot of an impeccable social discipline. Suspicious with the strangers who only seem to be there to take from them and run away, they trusted me with their greatest fear: a sound! The sound of the bulldozer that will eventually demolish their lives along with their huts…
For me, photography has the power to lead me where I otherwise could never find myself, to push me closer to myself and, eventually, to make the “moment” function as a passage to immortality.
