ITALY : August 2014
EARTH & AIR: A Part Of Me
When I sit with my wife Annie's mother Annina in her kitchen here in Chicago I am always reminded of her past through my photographs made on trips to the Italian village she came from, where she was born in 1923. Her home on Madonna Delle Grotte is now not what it used to be, but one can only imagine what it once was, vibrant and teeming with life and the aromas and vibrato of her earlier life in Italy. The same goes for Annie's late father Silvio's home on Via Garibaldi, both houses in the town of Rocchetta a Volturno. What has touched me the most though, is how easily Annie fits into the life there when we visit. She knows this is her past and present also, and even more so, she knows this is where she came from too. I told her on our last trip there this past summer that she seemed so at ease here. She just looked at me, and more or less, in my short paraphrase, she said to me, "why not, the earth and air here are both a part of me". Need I say more...