Valdescura is the birthplace of my mother, located in Umbria, in central Italy. It is a hill surrounded by greenery, with four houses and now only three inhabitants, a location difficult to find even on maps. I grew up in this place and came back every summer for a few weeks. Far from any city or supermarket, an hour from the sea, and an hour from the hospital, it is, for me, a place full of memories and roots.
Years ago, my mother was forced to move for work, she experienced this as an uprooting from what she considered her birthplace. She had spent all her childhood and adolescence immersed in the middle of nowhere. Up until 15 years old, she had never seen the sea. She’s always lived with grief about the lack of what she called her land, and I grew up internalizing a sense of deep melancholy towards the place where my origins reside which brings with it not only what is my family tree, but also a series of atmospheres, feelings, and rural realities typical of Italian culture, which are now disappearing.
Every time my mind returns to Valdescura, it does so with the awareness of remembering a place that is about to end. And I feel overwhelmed by a great sense of desolation and end. Like many mountain villages, or remote localities, it has grown from having several people to three. I am heartened to be able to tell it in some way, albeit under a darker and dreamlike vision, and I am glad that I can continue to live through my photographs.
I started from here, then in parallel with my pregnancy, because this place, which for me is an inner fulcrum, is linked to the roots that today I chose to plant in my life having Agatha.