Rain in the City

When I was a child, my parents were unaware of the vastness and depth of my imagination. Had they known – they, fervent Christians – they would never have told me the biblical myth of the Great Flood. A rain falling often like a forest of reeds, heavy and unstoppable, that poured down from an incontinent sky to carry out the vengeance of a god. I remember that on days of heavy rain, I would keep my eyes glued to the window panes, wondering if, sooner or later, it would stop raining or if this would be a new flood. A possibility that, according to the logic of the time – as taught by the Catholic catechism – was still plausible. Especially because we, the kids from the suburbs, growing up divided into gangs and armed with slingshots, blowpipes, and rubber-band guns, enthusiastically contributed to the sins of the world. Including the sin of running around in the rain and puddles – flood or no flood – and then bringing home tons of mud.

With childhood and adolescence left behind, rain obviously no longer suggested biblical reflections to me. But in every one of its forms, from the delicate spring drizzle to the fiercest downpour, it continued to exert its fascination on me. This was further reinforced both by the great classics of literature – from Tolstoy to Fitzgerald, from Melville to Dostoevsky, from Mishima to Kafka – and by the films in which rain played an emblematic and evocative role. Like the delicate The Rain by Hong Sang-soo or the fierce A Clockwork Orange by Kubrick.

Perhaps this is why one of the recurring themes in my photographs is still, to this day, rain. Or rather, the way in which people react to it. Especially in urban environments, where the frantic pace of life rarely allows for contemplative moments. So, in the rain, one never stops. We walk, we run, we stumble, we fidget. Sometimes, giving in to amazement or dismay, sometimes simply surrendering.

However, not infrequently, even in the most challenging conditions, among people captured in the rain, there is a light of underlying happiness. As if a glimmer of that unconscious joy which, as children, urged us all to run with arms open and faces turned toward the sky, were being regenerated.