THEM KIDS
It is a project developed over the years, between 2018, when I started taking photos, and 2023. When I began, I worked as a teacher in a kindergarten, the same one I attended as a child.
I took pictures of the children with my smartphone to share with their parents the activities carried out during school hours.
This experience allowed me to discover photography both as a tool to observe the external world and as a means to understand my own inner world.
The photographic narrative continued during the summer. The school organizes summer camps for kindergarten children and even for those attending elementary school, where learning takes place in nature. The children, with their teachers, spend a week at the seaside, staying in bungalows and spending their days simply camping. Play is free, with some recreational activities organized by the teachers.
I photographed the children, realizing I was an adult while rediscovering my inner child.
I wanted to describe children in their being, their gestures, their emotions, and their characters.
Through a combination of candid moments and carefully composed portraits, I aim to create a visual narrative that is both personal and universal.
This visual story aims to restore a naturalness typical of the world of childhood, a "free" gaze, at their level, without great superstructures. It wants to give voice to the uniqueness of each child, different from the others. Perhaps, in the end, it is untranslatable.
Throughout the years, the photographs were captured using a smartphone or analog point-and-shoot cameras.
"Mystery" is a key word. I have preferred a gaze that creates mystery, something unknown, that generates interest and amazement, a typical infantile aspect towards a world to be discovered.
The intent is not to overexplain, I want to leave room for interpretation.
I want to leave viewer the opportunity to interpret their own vision of childhood, reconnecting (or not) with their own.
