Colours and Mysteries – Peru and Easter Island, a photographic journey

Telling the story of a journey that was strongly desired over time, using only images, means making others feel what my family and I experienced on the spot. Every photo has a story to tell, one each of us can interpret in their own way...

To fix the instant, like an eternal motion, an unfathomable moment that can tell the world. For me, that is photography: a long, endless journey made of instants. "Colours and Mysteries" – Peru and Easter Island – a photographic account of a journey. Why give a title to this travel diary of ours? Ours because it was made together with my family and wants to tell, above all through a few images, the places, the colours and the mysteries of these places we visited. The mystery of the MOAI of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the mysterious markings on the land of Nazca in Peru, drawings that can only be seen and photographed from above — everything here speaks of the mysteries celebrated by the very ancient rites of these civilisations. One photo above all introduces me to this journey: the latch on a door, an unfathomable sign of denied access, the mystery indeed.

I tried to enter this journey not so much as a narrator, but as a real inhabitant of those places. From my photographic point of view (I forgot to say I'm a photographer), the most beautiful photo I took — I shot about six thousand — is the image of a wooden balustrade that, on a white wall, fictitiously reconstructs an entrance, with a strong, explosive oblique line. Talking about a place, but doing it with ordinary images that we could also take at home, for example the red geranium on the blue window in Ercolano, seems to me very strong, clean, clear, sinewy, yet full of pathos for those places. It isn't easy to cross those places; at times I got lost, photographically speaking, I saw images overlapping before me, a myriad of ideas for trying to take beautiful photos; the women seen from behind hide a mystery, they are as inaccessible as those places.

Photographing Easter Island, the first strongest image is that of the spiny tree in the foreground, so representative of the whole island, with the barren, arid pyramid-shaped mount behind it, yet pyramid-like in a mystic sense. I tried to play a little with backlighting so that the shadow has the last word, to reveal secrets of a world rich in visions, alas irremediably distant from us.

AFTER ABOUT 40 YEARS DAD HAS MANAGED TO FULFIL HIS DREAM. THE PHOTO WE PREFER IS THAT OF A SUNSET ON EASTER ISLAND WHOSE COLOURS ARE SPECTACULAR, SHADES OF PINK AND ORANGE. WE REMEMBER OUR FATHER'S CRAZY URGE TO PHOTOGRAPH SUNRISES AND SUNSETS AT RAPA NUI WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING WHY. TO US THE SUNRISES ALL LOOKED THE SAME. WHAT DID THOSE OF EASTER ISLAND HAVE IN PARTICULAR? ONLY WHEN WE WERE THERE DID WE UNDERSTAND: THEY ARE EXPERIENCES THAT AROUSED STRONG SENSATIONS AND EMOTIONS IN US. PERHAPS ALSO BECAUSE OF THE MYSTERIES THIS ISLAND IS BOUND TO. THE SAME CONSIDERATIONS CAN BE MADE FOR PERU, AND IN PARTICULAR MACHU PICCHU, THE ONLY INCA CITADEL NOT DESTROYED BY THE SPANIARDS. THE CITY IS SHROUDED IN FOG IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE DAY, AND WHEN IT DISAPPEARS IT GIFTS ALL VISITORS A SPLENDID VIEW.

PERU AND EASTER ISLAND ARE TWO PARADISE-LIKE PLACES, BUT IN THE WORLD THERE ARE MANY OTHER PLACES FULL OF MYSTERY THAT LEAVE US WITH SPLENDID SENSATIONS.

Before leaving for this journey I was full of doubts and uncertainties, then someone wiser than me told me: "Go and enjoy this moment with your family." And so it was: an unforgettable journey, both for the beauties and for the extraordinary culture. I thank my husband and my daughters who allowed me all this.