Beginner mistakes
Filling your suitcase for a long trip with useless and heavy things knowing that you wouldn't use most of the things even at home;
Not having thought of a way to filter the terrible water that you will have to drink for the next forty days knowing that a twenty euro water bottle would have been enough to avoid thirst;
Forgetting to keep your passport in your pocket when you leave the house and forgetting for the umpteenth time to put on sunscreen after twenty-eight years of sunburn on your skin;
Keeping your camera in sight where you shouldn't, because you do it for a living and you should also have learned that it scares people, "your subjects";
Convincing yourself that you can be indispensable, getting angry for nothing, pretending that those who don't know you immediately understand what you're made of, while avoiding saying what you really think;
Promise yourself, even today, that this will be your last cigarette.
Of all my defects, perhaps the one I prefer is the fact that I am obsessively obsessed with trying to keep the tools of the trade in order and always clean: camera always charged and empty memory cards ready for use, computer constantly dusted and with the keys always clean from the sweat of my hands, the printer covered by a cloth so as not to risk, I'm still not sure how, anything ending up on the very delicate parts that will give life to my photographs. All ready to use in the safest and easiest place to remember so that when I need it I won't have to waste a second looking for it.
I'm not sure where this need came from, probably if I think about it since I was a child I was obsessed with tidying up my games, or rather in my order, perhaps after my various work experiences in different companies I got used to tidying up everything with conviction so that no one will be able to dispute anything against me.
I don't even know if I'm interested in knowing where this thing comes from, I like to be tidy, whether it's just common sense or perhaps more simply that I'm just a bit of an asshole, given that for example my bed is often a disaster in comparison and after every It takes at least a week for the washing machine to fold the clothes back into place, but I just can't get past some things.
The human mind is curious.
With these premises I catapulted myself into Serbia to document the border with Hungary, the currently most problematic border when talking about the Balkan Route in terms of the number of people, rejections and a myriad of consequent problems, including human traffickers.
I share the house where I stay with other volunteers who are engaged like me in the indispensable task of making the world a better place, some are responsible for organizing the days, some are preparing the material and some are talking about it to the world. A dear friend would define the situation as “a very white thing” and I really don't know how else to describe it. It is difficult for me to think of it differently from an experience that tends to be an end in itself, or rather useful to those who carry it out more than to those who receive it. Let's say we patch things up and even if we wanted we couldn't do more, the only people who could really change the situation are all those figures of power who have the luxury of being able to make decisions and yet faced with the evidence of a humanitarian crisis of apocalyptic dimensions they cannot they do nothing but complicate things for those who have nothing but a shred of hope.
Instead we limit ourselves to bringing a few pieces of bread and some apples bought at a discount without yet knowing what words to use to try to make the rest of the world change the way they see things. Sounds dramatic, right? Yet the reality of the facts is this. We spend the days bringing food and showers to the People on the Move coming from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and so on, the stories are often repeated and the methods almost never change, just like the fact that the problem of the Migratory Routes does not seem to be resolved but rather it continues to get worse. Yet here we continue to run uninterruptedly between a cultivated field, a factory or the abandoned rails of a rusty train, from checking that the police do not arrive to making sure that those being helped are not in some way part of some criminal activity, aware in a certain sense, being able to focus only on doing as little damage as possible rather than improving is unknown like the energy of the universe.
In all of this, I am here to document what happens through my camera, in a poetic adventure where we are the good guys and the bad guys are all those who don't share our work, I think. Being a photographer and telling the world is the dream of my life and it is the thing that most of all makes me feel alive, yet lately I often try to stop and reflect on what I am doing, or rather on what is being done.
Going back to my obsession with protagonism, in fact the first days here were intense not because the general situation is psychologically heavy but rather because the kitchen of this house is constantly dirty and messy and I really don't like this thing, that homely instinct that in somehow it takes over the main theme of my work by getting on my nerves in a completely useless series of misspent English words for my seemingly just cause.
For example, the other day I met a very young Syrian boy, tall, with a well-kept beard and infinite kindness. He told me that he had escaped from Syria with his family to move to Turkey so he could study computer engineering. However, fed up with the systematic racism of most Turks towards Syrians, he decided to leave and go north, perhaps Germany, perhaps Norway. He let himself be photographed with my promise that "if you make it, I will come and visit you with the printed photograph". Or the following day when after hours under the scorching sun (and without sunscreen) an Afghan woman, generally very difficult even to find along the Balkan crossing, allowed herself to be photographed together with her husband, answering me very shyly in perfect English, almost out of envy.
These should be my topics of discussion, not the dirty dishes at home or the dust under the bed assigned to me in the common room.
If in order to be able to tell these stories exhaustively all I need in exchange is to drink a little dirty water and eat a few more soggy vegetables than usual then I should be more than happy with how things are going. But perhaps the problem is that we look for answers by asking ourselves the wrong questions. When I arrived, a week ago, what I couldn't stop thinking about while staying in this house is "what am I doing here?" when the only thing should have been "I know why I'm here"
A Polish mountaineer, Tomek Mackiewicz, who died a few years ago during a very difficult climb on one of the highest peaks on the planet had described the question of the risk of his work thus: “And why am I doing it, why am I pushing”? For the same reason Columbus went to discover America, Amundsen reached the South Pole, Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific, Gagarin flew into orbit and Armstrong landed on the Moon. And why did Copernicus announce his theory by exposing himself to the Church? He could rest assured. Because a man has the need to explore, to acquire, and it is because of this need, as a species, that we no longer walk on trees or feed on worms. And why are we saving those who “found themselves in danger through no fault of their own”? Because we are people. Because we have feelings of empathy. And in the end, I would really like to ask these gentlemen (…) to think of themselves, in case anyone ever remembers their accomplishments. Because maybe it's worth experiencing something, something more than a tasty dinner.”
So returning to my thoughts, yes, I really made a beginner's mistake, I preached well and scratched around badly, very badly. I claimed to be indispensable, to have absolute reason, forgetting why I came this far and letting myself get caught up in something completely superficial, forgetting about that part of necessarily indispensable sacrifices. And it would have been enough to sit and think for a few minutes. Minutes that I finally gave myself and which, in addition to reassuring me, also made me understand that the next five weeks will pass quickly and now I remember well why I'm here, because if something needs to be done, it gets done.
