Portraits

My choice was to wear the clothing of a man who I felt interwined with, with my guts. For a moment a theatrical experience, a performance. Perhaps… a part of myself hidden by modesty.

I wanted to play the role of an ‘alpha male’. I asked Roberto to exchange his clothes with mine and to shoot the portraits in a church.
For an atheist like me, it is a huge challenge.

I asked Pino, my husband since a few months, to wear my wedding dress. A dress, that of a wife, that I never thought I would wear. But with Pino anything can happen. It doesn’t surprise me that he wears my clothes better than I do, with simplicity and strength, innate elegance and a thread of despair.

My father works at the National Library. He is a calm and reasonable person.
I am often very impulsive and aggressive. Sometimes, to resemble him would help to keep my friendships close and think more clearly.

“It is clothes that wear us and not we them” said Virginia Woolf.
I wanted to wear Alessandra’s clothes and she chose this dress for me. The rest came by itself, easily and in a process of liberation from the canons of beauty imposed on me and by me.

Everyone has told me that I am beautiful in these photos.
I have never felt beautiful, neither in the past nor now; during my school days, the bullying I suffered was aimed at my physical appearance, my way of dressing and my shyness, as well as my alleged homosexuality (I came out at the age of 22 as gay and at 28 as bisexual) or the fact that my name resembled the word “ricchione” (faggot).
Unlike in the past, I like my body, especially in its versatility. I don’t consider myself handsome, but I do like myself. However, I do agree with the definition of “beautiful” in relation to these photos, which captures the pleasure I feel for my body and in the path of liberation itself. Somehow I felt liberated after the shooting, like when I get a tattoo: an experiment in liberating the body from a series of lingering fears and shames.
I would have liked to have been able to take some photos outside, among the market stalls, but I didn’t feel like it. If it happens again, I won’t shy away.