Inspiration, in this pictures, is in the land, Sicily.
Inspiration is a peculiar friend: you never know when it visits nor how long she’s going to stay, but when you write for a living, her presence is always welcome.
And inspiration, often, prefers to come uninvited, appearing when you least expect her, just like it happened to Paolo the other day, while he was surfing the internet to kill some time while having coffee. Between an article about Covid-19 and another, here it is: inspiration, in the shape of images. Nothing out of the ordinary, you may argue, isn’t it what we see the main source of our curiosity, creativity and thinking power?
Nunzio Bruno is an Italian photographer. He specializes in wedding photography, but that’s not the point and it shouldn’t be. The point is what you end up feeling when you look at his pictures, and that’s where the inspiration, the one Paolo felt and asked me to channel in an article comes from.
These photos are more than a snapshot of someone’s special day, more than a memory in someone’s heart — if there’s something “more” than that, that is.
Look at them carefully, look at the chiaroscuros dancing between the black and the white, look at the reds, yellows and grays, the colors of the earth, of the soil of Italy.
Inspiration, in this pictures, lies in the landscape. Inspiration, in this pictures, is in the land. Sicily, which is backdrop to the happiness of all these couples, just can’t quite stay in the background.
And so, just beside the happiness of the groom and the beauty of the bride, you find the ancient soul of the island, with her stone and her sun, her roads and her churches. But also the intimacy of a home, the tiny gestures of a woman ironing her own wedding dress and a mother combing her daughter’s hair: are there moments more prosaic yet more significant than these? As inconsequent as they may seem, they in fact hold a memory as precious as gold, because unique in time and space, and in the minds of those who were there.
There is the essence of a country, in this photos. The beauty of the land, the ties to heritage and spirituality, the simple, incomparable love that only families can give.
Of course, they are a memento of happiness and joy for the people in them. Yet, they are also a portrait of a slice of Italian world, a world as ancient as our traditions, as modern as we are. This is the beauty of Italy and of each and every of its regions: the way the past and the present manage to still hold each other’s hand.
Check the work of Nunzio Bruno in full resolution (his photos are even better like that!) on Nunzio Bruno website.
