Why not?

Photography is a journey of discovery. I am always looking, wondering, questioning, seeking to understand the world in what it reveals — and what it hides — in plain sight. With the camera, I can capture a fleeting moment before it disappears, preserving its majesty and mystery for future contemplation. Like memories, my photographs flicker and flow in the space that lies in between fantasy and reality. I am fascinated by the way light and shadow, color and form can transform the material world into optical illusion so that it feels as though we are moving weightlessly through a dream.
When I set out to photograph Ipanema Beach for Águas de Ouro, Portuguese for “waters of gold,” I wanted to return to the landscape of my past — to the world In knew as a young girl in the 1950s and ‘60s. Once the exclusive provenance of the wealthy elite, Ipanema now belongs to the people, the cariocas of Rio de Janeiro.
Walking along the shore with my camera, I was dazzled by the light dancing across the waves of the sea and mesmerized by the sway of the people moving slowly across the sand, their graceful silhouettes the visual equivalent of a samba song. In these moments of beauty and joy, I also perceived something deeper — the bittersweet yearning that Brazilians call saudade, intense feelings of nostalgia and yearning for something or somebody far away and out of reach. At Ipanema, cariocas can set aside their struggles for the day, reveling in the pleasures of sun, surf, and shore, expressing joy for life despite the hardships they endure.
While creating Águas de Ouro, I found myself enthralled by visions of abstraction, reflections, and silhouettes, and by the presence of a mystical energy that reveals itself in unexpected ways. Drawn to things that I don’t quite understand but profoundly feel, I began to think of these moments as “scarti” (Italian for “scraps”) of time, as odd fragments that sparkle and flash, their momentary brilliance leaving us entranced. Although often, they flicker and fade away before they catch our eye.
It is only when our relationship to time changes that we may begin to see a more full picture of life, albeit far more often by necessity than choice. When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill in March 2020, I began to feel like I was accumulating “scraps” of time, rather than experiencing it as successive blocks that formed the linear story of my life. No longer able to physically travel, I embarked on a journey through inner space, delving into my imagination while revisiting the photographs in my archive. I began pairing unrelated images into photo collages to create Scarti di Tempo, which means both “time discrepancy” and “scraps of time”.