The Moon was Broken

The Moon Was Broken was inspired by a childhood memory. I was at Luna Park with my family; I was 5 years old. We were living in Sicily, in a little village called Torrenova where we had moved because of my father’s job. It was night. We were going back home when I saw the moon in the black sky and I started to cry. It was a full moon, but I couldn’t see the moon entirely because there were dark clouds in front of it. To my child’s eyes, the moon was broken. I can remember very well what I was feeling: I was crying because I was scared. That broken moon was ominous, to me a portent of things to come.

Then, just a few days after the move, my father had a car accident. Nobody could believe he survived. I remember everything connected to that period. Three months at the hospital. I can remember the wrecked car, the doctors, my father on the hospital bed. But to me, they are less memories than shapes in my mind. Geometrical shapes. The car, the bed, machinery. The only clear memory is that broken moon and the feeling about it.

I’ve started to think about the connection between this memory and between me and my father. How it has evolved. How it is today.

Since I was a young child, I have been very close to my father. We were always together. I wanted him to bring me to work. I waited for him to come home from work at night. When I was ill, I didn’t want anyone but him to take care of me. We shared a lot of passions like documentaries, nature, mountain climbing, football, old movies, and, most of all, astronomy. I’m an astronomy enthusiast, and I’ve brought this interest into some of my art projects.

Over the years our relationship became more complex. He’s a typical Sicilian man, who doesn’t show his emotions or feelings, and is not verbal. It’s very hard to understand what he’s thinking or how he’s feeling. It’s hard for him to express his feelings, and I myself have taken after him in this respect.

I left home at the age of 18. Now we never talk and we see each other just for a couple of weeks a year. I feel we’re still very close, but we never express it. Some months ago I felt the same feeling that I felt looking at the broken moon. My father is experiencing serious health problems. It’s a familiar story. But this time I’m far from home. The thing that worries me the most is that he never talks about it; he continues to internalize his feelings. He’s locked in his world.

I’ve decided to tell this story because during my first observation of the moon for one of my photography projects, this memory came to my mind. Looking at the moon through a telescope and remembering a precise moment years ago, I recognized its connection to something that is happening now.

I decided to go to Sicily. My father didn’t know my intentions. I talked to him. It has been a complex discussion where a lot of feelings, memories, explanations, and regrets were revealed. I photographed him in the same place where I saw the broken moon. Maybe that’s the most difficult image that I’ve ever captured. My father in front of my camera, in a spot so significant in my memory.

This story talks about me and my identity, apprehended through memory and imagination connected to reality. I’m documenting places and pieces of autobiography, connecting them with the symbols of this story. Geometries, astronomy, shapes, trees and nature are part of the narrative, creating several languages and scenarios that belong to the same concept. This mix is a fair indicator of what a memory can bring with it, how it contrasts with subsequent developments and change, why telling a personal story necessitates using several approaches.

The Moon Was Broken is a collection of different states of mind, and a glimpse into my sensibility today. The unfolding rhythms suggest the changes subtly occurring in my life and in the relationship with my father.