I remember my mother, persistently trying to take a picture of me with a Minolta camera, and me, desperately trying to avoid it by closing my eyes, not being able to bare the Mediterranean sunlight.
I can’t stand it now either, even when it’s cloudy. I remember, while the cameras' film was reaching its end and the attempt to take a picture of me was a certified failure, the sudden, swift slap on my cheek.

I think, that, was the decisive moment.
The baptism by fire. Maybe that was what made me a photographer.
A slap. Hard or soft, who cares?!

So, here we are, today after a year of the pandemic, and I wonder what the connection between these pictures is…

Honesty.
Small photographic bits from trips, trails, people, indifferent landscapes, everything I love mixed together with chemical spoiling, grains, signs and scratches. The signs became part of the story-telling.
A canvas of semantic references filled with imperfections but also with all these little and stupid things that give a meaning to our lives.
A nostalgic certificate of a more tender period, an invisible familiarity.

None of these photographs have been edited and that was a fully conscious decision. In an era of hysteria where everybody tries to reach perfection even if they will never reach it, in an era where a pandemic has pulled the rug from under our feet and makes us face a loud silence, a void, the lack of perfection is what makes us humane.
In an upcoming era where algorithms rule, film photography reminds me that beauty hides somewhere else, far away from chasing perfection…

© Translation by: Anastasia Chormova