This is Luigi Brandi, my grandma’s older brother, and the inspiration for my Master project.

When he was eighteen, he travelled to Argentina without money. He lived for months in the open-air construction sites he worked on during the day, barely knowing the language. His life moved on, quality of life increased, but it took a long time for him to come back (for a visit) to Italy. A decade. Without easy access to phones, videos, or travel. I felt privileged and almost insensitive after reflecting upon how difficult it must have been for him.

The last time he came back, he knew it was his last time in Italy. I was moved looking at a man gazing at the landscape he grew up in. Knowing that would have been his last time looking at those hills, smelling these scents, feeling the sun the same way. He knew that old age wouldn’t allow him to travel easily again. This is where I started. I contacted my distant family in Argentina for a call, trying to understand beforehand if Luigi was comfortable talking to me and letting me use his story. We agreed to meet, but that project was changed entirely after the interview.

Something happened.
We spoke for hours, trying to go through slowly the list of questions I tried to prepare beforehand. I was shocked, noticing how much I couldn’t remember. He is almost 100 years old, but the story he was so proud to tell anyone (so much so that everyone knew how to answer my question, except for him) wasn’t his anymore. He would remember small details. Scenes from his childhood and landscapes in Argentina would remind him of Italy.

Small things. I loved talking with him, but when we closed the call, I was... sad. The history that all that made him wasn’t his anymore. This affected me so much that I needed to reflect upon this in my work.

I was incredibly fascinated by the pictures that I found at home. I loved having them, looking at them, wondering who everyone was and how their life must have been. I wondered how I could recreate the feeling and how my project could move forward, including them. At first, I wanted to create a book, but the more I worked on it, the more I knew I wanted to leave them pure. To recreate them, edit them somehow, putting them at my project’s centre. I started editing them in different ways, taking the place of Luigi’s memory and mind while doing it. Respectfully.

Playing the role of time is something other than what I aspired to while working on this project. I always wanted to create a space, a reflection. Time is not of the essence here. It doesn’t matter why or how Luigi forgot his memories.

I called this process “the Gentle Removal” for several reasons. The critical exercise in this experiment is to try to remove my uncle seamlessly from every picture. The picture will remain untouched like he was never there. It is supposed to be something real, the actual image or memory, so any other person in the picture must be left there. They do remember. They were there. Luigi is the only one that wasn’t.

Together with the pictures I produced a booklet that wanted to be an outlet, a point of connection between my reflection and the viewer, the product of our collective feelings. It was essential for me to try to collect and cherish not just my memories or those from my family but also allow other people to join a collective tentative of rebuilding their memories, creating a safe space to collect our most cherished moments. To collect who we are.

In loving memory of Luigi Brandi
06/08/2023