BEHIND THE SHOT

Once upon a time there was a villa in the forest…or at least, it would start our story if it were a fairy tale because the villa in question is really surrounded by the vegetation of its park that has grown so much to become a forest. It looks like a villa of a Tim Burton movie, hidden away to preserve who knows what witchcraft inside.

However, I go into the woods improvising the best path, even when I see the building I struggle to find the best way for an entrance that is not surrounded by brambles.

We are in August 2020 (but I’m back again in the following year to photograph with new optics) and the humidity that surrounds me, along with mosquitoes, is worthy of an equatorial forest.

From outside I can already admire the potential of the villa with its decorative processes around the decadent doors.

The silence is interrupted when I blind from a side entrance torn, because of the usual pigeons that flutter chaotically towards an escape.

The structure is into the category “skeletons”, inside there is no presence of old furniture abandoned, everything has been carefully stolen. But the beauty of this place is what you can’t steal. Already from the first rooms on the ground floor I find rooms with decorations on the walls. The past opulence is easily understood by observing everything around.

A private chapel lives in the center of the building in a small room mistreated by some vandal writings.

Half of the villa has almost collapsed, there are some rooms, fortunately those less attractive, which have a huge pile of debris in the center, the ceiling almost totally collapsed.

A beautiful room, perhaps a bedroom, in the corner of the villa fascinates me. The decorative inlays on the walls and an old skeleton of a rusty bed make me fantasize about the room, perhaps it was the bedroom of some privileged first-born child. I imagine the caregiver who reads adventure novels by Giulio Verne at the children.

A large staircase in the center of the building with numerous rubble leads to an empty space on the first floor. Fortunately for me there is still a secondary staircase that was normally used by servants to move unnoticed.

This ladder leads me to inspect the surviving half of the first floor. I find two very similar rooms with both the remains of a fireplace. Both also share the theft of the floor, in fact only the slats that served as a support remain. And they share the acrid smell of pigeon guano permeating the air, with a carpet of excrement replacing the original floor.

I move hopping on the most untouched strips to avoid as much as possible the cereal effect “Cococops” trampled.

One of the two is preferred for the best shot because unlike the other still had a large part of the ceiling still painted.

The difficulty of including as many elements as possible in these contexts is part of the photographer’s difficulty, because the space and capacity of the lens are limited.

But over the years I’ve learned techniques that many photographers don’t use that allow me to capture rooms in all their wideness and beauty.

So I managed to capture the ancient vestiges of this room, a photo that maybe will become unique because it can no longer be photographed considering the imminent collapses.

After two hours spent creating the best possible shooting service of this incredible villa I am about to leave.

Pigeons regain confidence when I get out of the way, and they return to being the last inhabitants of this decadent wonder.