Daniela
Parisi

Wednesday, July 9, 1986. In the picture, a year later or a little more. I was only 12 months old, or a little more. The lady next to me is my grandmother, the woman from whom I inherited my redhead. In this photo you can see all her pride and my passion for laces. Therefore, you can notice that my favourite colour is white. That oversize watch I wear on my right arm, too big for my wrist, is the sign that I would have been left-handed. That watch belonged to my father, the author of the photo taken with an old Kodak, one of those that simple families could afford at the time. You can’t see it but I know that this photo was taken in Apulia, at the seaside, whereas I was born in Naples, at the Santa Patrizia Clinic located in Corso Secondigliano, a hospital that no longer exists today.

What you don’t see from this photo is that photography would have become my way of seeing the world. From the art high school, which shaped me more than any other school, I came out as a painter with a strong movement towards everything that is art. I made the wrong choice: I attended university and only thanks to an Erasmus experience in Stockholm, I realised how irresistible the shape of light is for me. Then the bachelor degree and the master degree, followed by the Riccardo Bauer photography school. Later, the job as a photographer and as a communication specialist and social media manager. In all this, I missed painting. But I don’t want to talk about this: I had many experiences in several companies and I grew up in a work environment that was already saturated before my entrance; so I closed my eyes (I was 30 years old) and asked myself what drove me in life, what was my “duende”*. I understood very quickly that I wanted to teach teenagers… crazy, rebellious, and reckless teenagers! I feel comfortable with them: I talk to them, I see them and especially I listen to them. So here I am, dividing my time between theater photography, personal projects (also painting, because then it came back) and teaching. I teach photography and the language of cinema in high schools. For me, teaching is a bit like leaving a heritage to others and every time I do it, I also leave a piece of my heart: “Hey there, Prof! Today are we shooting?”.

*Duende: “a certain “je ne sais quoi” possessed by artists (not everyone), that mysterious force that emanates the spirit of the Earth and can be felt but cannot be explained, that thing that every artist would like to have for himself, and that the bullfighters sometimes they show in their movements, but also painters, musicians, poets. It is not a muse, it is not an angel, but it is still something that one takes possession of, but which is already inside, in the most hidden rooms of the blood.”

Federico Garcìa Lorca, “Theory and function of the duende”.