Sardinia 1959 – Azerbaijan 2015

What prompts us to go far? Far in space, I mean, when our space seems restricted? More than space, it is the search for a lost time. There is a somewhere else, where the lost time is still present. Immersed in these worlds, we find a slower time, an isolation that helps us to listen to ourselves. We abandon our roles, and we become ourselves again, with our smiles, our looks, often our silences. In these silences we find, along with the time which seemed lost, a more real world, which for us, for our lives, had ceased to exist.

Coming home from Azerbaijan, the comparison with Sardinia, about which I have just spoken in the previous post on the wonderful book of Carlo Bavagnoli, was inevitable. In the double pictures below, the photos taken in Xinaliq are mine. Xinaliq was the most desired goal of the trip. I had read about it the beautiful Figli di Noè by Monika Bulaj, this outstanding Polish traveler and photographer, whose solo exhibition last month in Milan was obviously visited by us, and we also saw her documentary Figli di Noè.

You get to Xinaliq after several kilometers in an estranging natural envirement. The emotion is very strong. Breathtaking views appeared before my eyes, and the rest, the persons and the houses, were revealed only gradually. Xinaliq has remained in my heart, and I would go back if it is possible. I will definitely return to Sardinia, where still something has been left from the world portrayed by Bavagnoli. While waiting, I am browsing both books, looking at our photographs, and finding new analogies. The photos taken in Xinaliq are not stolen photos. Among the subjects and me there was a game of looking. And, of course, of silences.