Yesterday with Marielisa we talked about time, not the one measured by clocks but the other one, the kind that seeps into work, into bones, into the silences between one word and the next. Without much fuss, we shared what truly matters: how in our field, as in almost all, falseness strolls around like a neighbor, and how time eventually cleans, leaving in plain sight which connections were real.

And I thanked her, one of those thanks that feel like a smile. Because even if we don’t speak every day, seeing each other well, grounded in our own paths, is enough, like running into someone on the street and understanding without explanations. 

I never liked talking about the weather, those who have worked with me already know. I prefer those small things that keep hanging when the conversation ends. In the end, photos are just evidence, papers or data made of light. My real work is somewhere else, in the invisible part of the photo, in that place behind the curtain where two people understand each other with a glance or with a phrase spoken almost at the ear.

It is not esotericism or cheap mystery, it is the simplest and most human thing, and perhaps for that very reason the least valued: conversation, the middle ground, that thread that ties without asking for anything more than being present. And so it has been with Marielisa.