I was born here.
I was born in Catania in 1981 and opened my first studio on this island. It is the one place where I already know who is standing behind the curtain before I turn around, and roughly what she is about to say.
Sicily is not a backdrop to be admired from a hired car. It is loud, crowded, badly organised and entirely worth it. A wedding here runs on its own clock, and the photographs that survive are the ones taken after the schedule has already collapsed.
-
[ 01 ] Catania and Etna
Black stone, black sand, and a volcano that decides the weather. The city I come from.
-
[ 02 ] Noto and the Val di Noto
Honey coloured baroque that turns orange for about forty minutes and then stops.
-
[ 03 ] Taormina
The view everybody books it for, and the alleys behind it that nobody photographs.
-
[ 04 ] Palermo
Markets, decay, gold. The hardest city on the island to photograph politely, which is why it works.
-
[ 05 ] Marzamemi and the south east
Fishing villages, tuna warehouses, and a sea that goes flat at dusk.
I am not directing you.
Sicilian weddings start later than anywhere else in Italy, and they finish later still. I plan for the second half of the night, not the first, because that is where the day actually happens.
Most of what I photograph here was never on the schedule. An aunt at a window, a neighbour shouting down from a balcony, a grandmother who has been sitting in that church since before the flowers arrived. Nobody put them on the plan, and they are the reason the photographs look like Sicily and not like a brochure.
You will not be marched into a lemon grove at sunset. If you want a frame of the two of you somewhere good, we take fifteen minutes and we take it once.
- You are from here. Does that actually help?
- It helps with the things nobody writes in a plan: who to ask, which road is closed, what time the church really opens. It does not make the photographs better on its own.
- How late does it really go?
- Later than you have been told. The party here does not warm up until the rest of Italy has gone home, and I stay for it. When we talk about the day I will tell you honestly which hours matter and which you can leave out.
- Do you travel for weddings?
- Yes. Anywhere in Italy and anywhere else. Travel and accommodation are quoted with the rest, so nothing appears on the invoice that was not agreed first.
- Will it be you photographing, or someone from a team?
- Me. On weddings I work alongside Giovanni Cocco, and the two of us are the two who turn up. You will never meet a photographer you have not spoken to.
- How long until we see the photographs?
- Everything is delivered within two months of the wedding, in a private online gallery you can download from home.
- Can we print wherever we like?
- Yes. The files are yours. You do not have to come through me to print, and I will not charge you for the privilege.
- Will you pose us?
- No. No details lined up like a catalogue, no walking towards the camera holding hands, no frame that could belong to anybody else. I photograph the day as it goes.
Getting married in Sicily?
Tell me the date, the place, and anything you already know. I answer personally, and I will tell you straight if I am not the right photographer for what you have in mind.