Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Documentary / Reportage »

Charcoal is a nocturnal visual diary that tracks situations and sensations, atmospheres and relationships that have shaped my life and those of the people I met since I moved to Bologna.

The images that comprise it are part of an identity-building process: remnants of an ongoing journey that began when, at the end of the pandemic, I decided to abandon my previous life and set out to find my voice and a different way of living. These images accompany my search for a home, both physically and metaphorically: they are traces of the places and others I've lived with and who have shaped my life here, moments of intensity I've experienced over the years and to which I've tried to give form.

In Bologna, I began to lead a different lifestyle, marked by greater instability and poverty, but also by experimentation, encounters, and a more intense and spontaneous relationship. I experienced firsthand the dramatic housing crisis, but this precariousness also provided me with an opportunity to root myself in public spaces like never before, and to engage in a more lively and creative relationship with the urban context and with the others. This pushed me to rethink the concept of home in a relational sense and to live in squats and occupied spaces.The night has been a further factor of immersion, a source of warmth, and a space of time in which I could explore logics and needs different from those that govern daytime life.