There are scheduled meetings and casual encounters.

 

There is an accomplished experiment and there is the risk to strive for it many times and never succeed.

 

There are punctiliously planned holidays and there are journeys, the ones where you leave without even knowing where you are going.

 

There are the notes of a piano… There are the soundtracks of our lives.

 

There is Hanin. She was born in Bulgaria from Iraqi parents, she lives in Denmark and speaks four languages. Sometimes she quotes Shakespeare and she always has a good reason to smile. She promised me we will go to London together. There should be an Hanin for every single person of this planet to have a better World.

 

There is Ennio, born and raised in Milan.

Wisp neatly rebellious, fashionable watch and manners like a real gentleman. There is his volunteering in Africa.

 

There are Giorgia, Stefano, Sara and Michele. There is my beautiful Italy. There is a newfound sense of belonging.

 

There is Flamine. She is only twenty. We have never went further the “Hi, how are you?”. There is her French accent. There are her movements and her natural beauty that make her unconsciously womanish and me culpably shy and embarrassed.

 

There are Svetlana, Andreina, Mette, Paulo, Lyuba, Sandra, Yoshihito…

There are Roxanne, Kahori, Emilio, Bego, Nirit, Randy, Natalia, Ilayda, Anna, Yana, Lars…

 

There are about a hundred guys and girls coming from every corner of the world.

 

There is the shiver I feel when I sit next to them. That healthy fear you have inside when you are afraid of being misunderstood or to do not understand. There is the courage to try anyway. There is the constant desire of communicate my thoughts. Of quench my thirst with their ones.

 

There is a New York that brought us all together.

 

There are the lights of the skyline. And I am sure that every single streetlamp, every single bulb, every single light switched on, depicts a dream. And our dreams never sleep, as this City with its yellow taxis, its skyscrapers, its people who deliriously run, Central Park, the Starbucks and the hot dogs sold on the streets.

 

There is the melting pot of our different cultures.

There are the “Three religions of the Book”.

There is who believes just in himself.

 

There are our books and our notes, read and written from left to right, from up to down or from right to left.

 

But there are also our loves. Equal, different, close, far away, lost or dreamed…

There is the brightness of our looks that has nothing to envy to the lights of Times Square.

 

There is a world that I don’t know. There is my desire to discover it. To add something up.

 

There is that ideal “Brooklyn Bridge” who combines our different points of view, permitting us to climb over the prejudice.

 

There is a small hotel room where my thoughts wander vaguely.

There is the will of knowledge, there is the will of discover new things. There is the moral duty of share them to not die.

 

There are our handshakes. Our hugs and hundreds of ways to greet each other. Zero, one, two or three kisses. Shoulder by shoulder or a simple “ciao”.

There are our hesitant gazes and our shyness.

 

There are our photos.

And you notice that a photo is only a blink.

 

Stuck in an imagine.

You print them in you mind.

You frame them and then, shoot.

 

And that moment is pure adrenaline. An electric shock. A shiver. For sure an hope.

 

The extraordinary thing is that a photo, before of remaining printed on the paper, will remain stick in you memory for an indefinite time.

Until when the brain permits it.

Until when there will be space.

Until when other imagines, other infinite blinks, will take its place.

 

It will be nice, one day, to open again the drawers of an old desk, or the ones of your memory, and find the imagine of that instant that was only as long as a blink but gave to you an emotion. An emotion that you maybe have forgotten, or maybe another one… more intense… new…. stronger.

 

I believe that the photos are alive.

There is a unusual magic hidden behind them.

Yes, they are magically alive.

They are not mute pictures. Try to think about it.

Behind a shot, behind the photo, behind a frame, there are smells, movements, sounds, passes, even ridiculous sensations.

 

There are the Hanin’s smiles, the delicate tone of Ilayda’s voice, there is Ennio, there is the Flamine’s gracefulness, there are my words.

 

There is Paris, there is Mexico City, San Paulo do Brazil, Bratislava, Rome and Shanghai.

 

And observing that photos means existing as that world exists.

 

Just pick it… just watch it… watch it in the depth…

Just to know how to look at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[photo by ENNIO ALAGIA]