Railway Station by Roberto Di Patrizi
Stations are an old passion of mine. I could spend whole days sitting in a corner, watching what happens. What other place, better than a station, reflects the spirit of a country, the mood of the people, their problems?
Tiziano Terzani
The stations are a crossroads of stories, lives and destinies. Places of mystery and hope. And the journey, whether short or long, is the most powerful mirror of life, its most fitting metaphor! Roberto Di Patrizi tells us, through his colorful and slightly ironic portraits, a cross-section of the life of our country. The faces of the men and women protagonists of his shots are iconic in the etymological sense. That is, they tell us about a social typology and tell us anthropologically where Italian society is going. It is a light, daily yet sometimes unsettling narration that can be found in Di Patrizi's shots.
"Watching people, - says the author - when no one notices you, is like watching the fireworks of spontaneity. I walk through the crowd with the camera always hanging around my neck, ready to shoot. Lawyers, secretaries, workers, professors, students, train conductors, tourists, policemen, train drivers... I move among these people observing them carefully: they seem to have all found their place in the world. Everyone except me. Is my role to steal their truths and deliver them to those who have none?
A few years ago, my wife and I decided to move to the province. And so I started commuting. The railway station, an immense crossroads for individuals of all ethnicities and nationalities, has gradually become my hunting reserve. In this fascinating no man's land there are so many stories, every day, that they all deserve to be told. I believe that photographing them is a way to turn Time the other way and, in that infinite instant, secretly caress Eternity.
BIO
I was born in Rome on October 16, 1964. Photography, I started to deepen it only in October 2010 (when Donatella, my wife, gave me a digital SLR for my forty-sixth birthday) but I have always timidly loved it. Before it, my main interest was Music. I did guitar bar, as well as the street singer. At the age of 35 I started working in a television station, first as a music entertainer, then as a broadcasting technician and later as a sound engineer. Here I also worked on graphics and another passion blossomed: CGI. This work experience lasted 13 years. After that I enrolled in a master for General 3D Artist in whose program of studies there were also rudiments of photography. At the end of the two-year period, having obtained the Autodesk Certification, I wanted to deepen by following a course in photographic technique. In short, to get here I went around wide. I've never liked shortcuts. Often, the beauty of a trip is not the place to reach but the road you take to get there.
