SNOW WHITE ATE THE APPLE IN MILAN
Sometimes there are stories that want to be told. These are stories that are known by everybody but that are not given attention to. This is one of those.
I used to live on the outskirts of Milan, very close to the middle earth where the vegetation gets the better of the concrete, a world inside the city limits that only has the name of the city, but not for certain the soul.
I was living my daily life completely ignoring what there was, a few steps from me – I come from the countryside and I moved to the city. I did not feel the need to go back to the origins: I used to leave my house and turn my back to that world that in the future would have become almost a shelter in the silence for me.
However, the story wanted to be told no matter what.
I entered the greenery for a few hundreds metres, in order to take some pictures of my neighbourhood from a different point of view which did not include only old grey crumbling buildings.
I was bored; lots of times I had walked in the Venetian countryside without anything to arouse my curiosity. Nothing until a sudden storm forced me to find shelter. Here, thanks to the pouring rain, the boredom and the silence, I started listening to the story that it had to tell.
I realized I was in Milan, but that was not Milan. It was not the Milan everyone knows or thinks they know. Captivated by these thoughts, I continued to listen to this strange story. I kept on entering the greenery without knowing where it would have taken me.
I did not care. I had to see.
I discovered a dying world, often left alone to rot, that was screaming loudly to be remembered, but at the same time it was trying to hide from me, almost as if its disclosure would have deprived it from what makes it so special.
If we look closely, there are also painters and artists that leave their art in the open air; scarecrows wearing military uniforms and dolls everywhere.
I bought a map of Milan and asked myself where I could find traces of this story. I studied the area and began a long itinerary, made of many bus journeys looking hard to find clues that would take me where I wanted to, and made of many walks in the countryside, among fields of cereals, with my feet often sinking in the muddy land, without knowing where I would have decided to stop.
Flags helped me, history loves flags and claiming a precise identity: where I would have seen a flag waving, most probably there was something to be told. Doors helped me. Yes, doors, as this world is hidden behind doors that sometimes I was unable to open – let us not forget how scared this story is to be written. Wherever I saw doors in the middle of the vegetation, I would have found the passage for my personal White Rabbit Hole.
It has been very difficult for me, a few meters away, to see that almost familiar world being destroyed in front of my eyes. The advancing of the urbanization and property speculation, together with the gospel that what is abusive has to be destroyed, have reduced what I documented to a few pictures and lots of memories.
Unfortunately, when you and the story share the same life, when you wake up in the morning excited about what the new day will bring, when the story has already told you everything that was to be told, you miss it and you would like to restart it, tell it again, but you cannot. You cannot do it as this story, which has become your story, has changed.
I used to live on the outskirts of Milan, very close to the middle earth where the vegetation gets the better of the concrete, a world inside the city limits that only has the name of the city, but not for certain the soul.
I was living my daily life completely ignoring what there was, a few steps from me – I come from the countryside and I moved to the city. I did not feel the need to go back to the origins: I used to leave my house and turn my back to that world that in the future would have become almost a shelter in the silence for me.
However, the story wanted to be told no matter what.
I entered the greenery for a few hundreds metres, in order to take some pictures of my neighbourhood from a different point of view which did not include only old grey crumbling buildings.
I was bored; lots of times I had walked in the Venetian countryside without anything to arouse my curiosity. Nothing until a sudden storm forced me to find shelter. Here, thanks to the pouring rain, the boredom and the silence, I started listening to the story that it had to tell.
I realized I was in Milan, but that was not Milan. It was not the Milan everyone knows or thinks they know. Captivated by these thoughts, I continued to listen to this strange story. I kept on entering the greenery without knowing where it would have taken me.
I did not care. I had to see.
I discovered a dying world, often left alone to rot, that was screaming loudly to be remembered, but at the same time it was trying to hide from me, almost as if its disclosure would have deprived it from what makes it so special.
If we look closely, there are also painters and artists that leave their art in the open air; scarecrows wearing military uniforms and dolls everywhere.
I bought a map of Milan and asked myself where I could find traces of this story. I studied the area and began a long itinerary, made of many bus journeys looking hard to find clues that would take me where I wanted to, and made of many walks in the countryside, among fields of cereals, with my feet often sinking in the muddy land, without knowing where I would have decided to stop.
Flags helped me, history loves flags and claiming a precise identity: where I would have seen a flag waving, most probably there was something to be told. Doors helped me. Yes, doors, as this world is hidden behind doors that sometimes I was unable to open – let us not forget how scared this story is to be written. Wherever I saw doors in the middle of the vegetation, I would have found the passage for my personal White Rabbit Hole.
It has been very difficult for me, a few meters away, to see that almost familiar world being destroyed in front of my eyes. The advancing of the urbanization and property speculation, together with the gospel that what is abusive has to be destroyed, have reduced what I documented to a few pictures and lots of memories.
Unfortunately, when you and the story share the same life, when you wake up in the morning excited about what the new day will bring, when the story has already told you everything that was to be told, you miss it and you would like to restart it, tell it again, but you cannot. You cannot do it as this story, which has become your story, has changed.