I was born in Modena in 1956. Four years later my father gave me an old Kodak Brownie (this camera had been, in turn, my grandfather’s gift for his marriage). I shot my first photo at the Paestum temple of Hera. It took quite a long time since, in the viewfinder, I saw all the columns leaning and I did not shoot until, after begging an elder and patient brother of mine, he did carry me on his shoulders on to a rock. Finally the columns were straight! Here’s how I started to think that photography helps to neaten up around. A few years passed and I got a bike and a Comet Bencini. This meant freedom to me. Every day I explored a new street in my native town and I shot a new photo. I did not know anything about Ansel Adams or the "National Geographic", but that small camera was my pass to enter the world, and find both its meaning and mine. When I was twelve I started to develop and print black and white photos in a small clandestine dark room. I turned from "Mickey Mouse" to "Progresso Fotografico" and "Popular Photography", that left a great mark on me. When I was thirteen, during one of my explorations in my native town, I ended up in a disaster area where there still were houses bombed during the war. There was a party in a nursery school: some children, a little younger than I, threw cloth balls against empty tomato tins. I shot a 72-photo roll, using the Canon Demi C, range finder and three lenses. I arouse the teachers’ curiosity: they asked me for my photos. Some days later I sold my first reportage: I was paid with the equivalent of a photo paper pack. Those teachers, whose name is unknown to me, have the responsibility of having created another professional photographer.