Once a person, a holy man, as most people would define him, told me that animals absorb our illnesses and take it on themselves, that’s why in dogs the occurrence of cancer is very high.
I remember smiling, full of my scientific truths. I was telling him the story of Ettore.
Ettore is a lucky Superhero, against all the predictions that wanted him to die within six months. After three and a half years another death sentence. But we have, foolishly and selfishly, perhaps, wanted to believe that magic really existed. We wanted to try again. And he allowed it. I took almost all of these photos in Ettore’s last month of life. As I was taking them, I viewed life, positivity, beauty. Once printed they screamed all the pain they contained. It took some time for me to fully understand. Ettore has done what Beings, human or not, do when they love. He made himself the means for other people’s happiness, he gave a sense to the choice I had made for him, he even recovered enough to convince me that I had made the right choice, until the energy that we all gave him wasn’t enough anymore. And even then he asked for permission to surrender.
About Elisa Mariotti
If being a photographer means working for magazines and being known and recognized, then no, I’m not a photographer and it’s wonderful to be a newbie at 49. But if it means facing life with a camera always by my side, to gather the essence, often through the faces I meet in the street, to exorcise the dark moments, to give voice to thousand magical stories then yes, I am a photographer.
The topics I deal with are living beings centred, with particular regard to children and to the ones that usually have no voice.
In 2019 I started a photo lab with children in a foster home: at the moment the lab is suspended for the pandemic. Another lab with children in the autism spectrum will start as soon as possible.
Some priceless, small but huge for me, satisfactions in the path. Convinced that only if something is confirmed it makes sense, I continue this wonderful journey. Because you live as you photograph and photograph as you live. I do it with a bright, fixed focal length, wide-angle lens. [Official Website]
