That Friday evening was dragging on like so many others in the predictable boredom of sluggish exhaustion of sensational, vaguely revolutionary, minimally amusing or sensational ideas to discuss among friends; to act for.

When Roberto stealthily handed me a strange casing: “Are you interested?” A “thing” enclosed in a leatherette case. At first glance, bulky and cumbersome.

Telling me, he didn’t know what to do with that insipid fatherly gift. If I had given him seventy thousand lire he would have given it to me. With concern I began to turn it over and over in my hands.

Observing it with growing curiosity; understanding its mechanisms, movements and knobs. After a short while, I managed to open the hatch, revealing the frosted glass of the viewer with the frame inside. Suddenly the world appeared to me dotted with unusual symmetries.

I said: “Okay!”. Then I got up and left the now asphyxia company of friends. I went out onto Viale Venezia which stretched out deserted into the late night, holding the “thing” in my hands.

With my head bent over the cockpit, walking blindly back and forth, I began to frame and shoot. Even though there was no film in the film chamber. It was called YASHICA MAT124G: my first challenging camera.

And Brescia, its streets, its suburbs, its perimetral and soul metamorphosis of those years, were the places where my photographic passion began. It was the spring of 1974. A place and a time that couldn’t not have a particular tribute.