Of great importance was my meeting with the medical doctor and explorer Cino Boccazzi, who, just back from one of his trips to Africa, had me fascinated by his story about the Dogons, a people discovered by chance by the French ethnologist Marcel Griaule in 1936, while crossing from Dakar to Djibouti.The reading of Somerset Maugham's 'The Moon and Sixpence' based loosely on the life of Paul Gauguin in the islands of the South Pacific, inspired me to go to there too.
And then, to the east, to the west, with a little rambling to the north and again to the south; how many times have I been around the world? I have lost count.
I was asked one evening to talk about my travels and, while I was talking, indicating my itineraries on a map, I suddenly realised that my journeys had been a pilgrimage to sacred places, where men and women of every race, creed and origin seek the reasons for their existence.
My first recollections are indelible: the flight, the sky, the desert, the ocean, the jungle, the mountains, the vastness of space... all the experiences I have lived through, all the people I have met. I am still conscious of colours, odours, sensations. I still carry inside myself the lingering effects of the discovery of atmospheres and emotions and of the perception of light captured in my photographs.
My initial discovery of Venice is difficult to pinpoint having been born and brought up in the city. I try to imagine a potential visitor standing like a sentry on the deck of a ship, scanning the horizon as dawn breaks. Water is all around until the outline of a strip of land begins to loom up in the distance: the island of Lido. Then the harbour mouth appears leading into the lagoon between two piers of white Istrian stone, an offering which the ships coming into Venice from the Mediterranean, by way of Dalmatia, were obliged to make to the Most Serene Republic. One turn to the left, one to the right and there, in all its splendour, the 'master of the house' appears, the campanile of St. Mark, dominating the basin. Then the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, the Punta della Dogana da Mar (Customs Point), Palazzo Ducale and, in the background, the domes of the church of the Madonna della Salute. Our tourist probably imagines him/herself to be daydreaming in front of the vision of this unique, aqueous city, a city deeply steeped in history and beyond time.
To live in this enchantment is the privilege of my everyday life.     <previous page

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