Amricord
“Amricord”, in the dialect of the province of Parma, “I remember”, represented for me the incipit of one of the many stories that my grandmother told me.
It was a bit like “once upon a time” that opened wide in front of my childish eyes a series of anecdotes that had colorful characters as protagonists, some of which with fancy nicknames.
When she lost her son, my father, grandmother Gina also gradually lost the memory of the present time.
On the contrary, the memories of the past, of her origins and of her people have remained firmly inside her and her stories, resistant to the bad weather of time and to sorrows, just like the stone house of the village where she was born and lived before to meet and marry my grandfather and move to Genoa.
Bore, in the province of Parma, is a small reality with few inhabitants and fresh air.
In some places it seems that time has stopped, the people are kind and when you pass someone on the street they always greet you.
I went back there to tell her memories with her images and to see them again in the light of the present.
I photographed the places she spoke to me about, I traced the people she knew directly or who are radically and viscerally linked to her land.
Inevitably grandma’s stories became mine too, people’s looks and their lives entered my heart, the places in my soul.
In one of the first photos I took, there is an empty chair looking out over the landscape.
I imagined that she was sitting there, remembering and reliving, through my eyes, that part of her life that she has never fully detached from, despite the distance, the years and her illness.
Gabriella Vaghini
