Sicily is wild, generous, honest. I imagine her as a woman and with Rosa Balistreri’s voice, hoarse and deep. For example, how could I not have turned into images the poetry of my great-aunt Iole, one of the two sisters of my grandmother, who never married, lived alone in the province of Ragusa in a house full of trinkets and the smell of almond biscuits coming up from the pastry shop downstairs. With her backcombed hair and a look that has never lost its fierceness even now that she is 93 years old. Sicilian women and generally from the south have a mysterious and archaic strength that stays through life, love, pain. Days ago, for example, I went in a southern city to say goodbye to a woman I met and who was a pillar for her entire neighbourhood. It is customary in this area that for a whole month relatives, friends and neighbours crowd the building and the house of the deceased person, in a never-ending come and go. That day there were women of all ages dressed in black sitting inside, outside, around the kitchen table, around the house, everywhere. Women who smoked endless cigarettes, who talked with quivering emotion about the person who had passed away, food, smiles and silence. And this ritual is repeated every day for a month. I was able to perceive in a strong and clear way the power of all those women gathered to comfort, to make an eternal farewell less painful. I will always take that scene with me, even if I haven’t photographed it.