“I had been trying to take his portrait all evening, and nothing worked. The light felt wrong; the moment kept slipping away. He was sitting there, calm and patient, but the image I was searching for, the truth, kept hiding behind the years on his face.

Then I noticed it. In the middle of the room stood an old wooden trunk, huge, heavy, marked by time. He told me I could have it if I needed something for my gear. I asked what it was. He smiled a little, the kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes, and said:
“That’s what I brought with me from Calabria, the few things I had when I came to Toronto. Everything I owned fit inside.”

When I asked if he remembered what was in it, he nodded slowly and began to speak. Not just about objects, but about moments, about the pieces of a life: a photograph of his mother, a knife from his father, a rosary, a shirt that smelled of salt, and a small bottle of oil from the old house.

He said the sea wasn’t romantic; the waves didn’t sing, they swallowed. The wind didn’t smell of salt, but of fear. Yet as he spoke, his eyes caught that old Calabrian light, and for a moment he became the young man again, standing on the deck with one bag and a great silence.

And in that moment, I felt it too. I was there with him, on that ship, crossing the dark water. The room disappeared, and all I could see was the boy he once was, and the man who had carried his whole world in a wooden box.

Then came the silence. He stopped talking, and I pressed the shutter. Just once.

That’s the photograph. That’s the story. Not about a man in front of a camera, but about everything he brought with him, and everything he left behind.

It remains my most cherished photograph, a single frame that carries an entire sea inside it.”

Sono arrivato.
I have arrived.

Today, in Toronto, the sea is calm. 🙂

With love,

Noirphotography.ca
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