115

I spent my childhood in Leno, a small town
in the Po Valley: I was about 115 cm tall. My parents both worked and I spent the afternoons after school with my paternal grandparents. The building, built by my grandfather who was a mason, was square in shape and composed of a very low basement and a mezzanine floor.
I had free access to the whole basement and
the afternoon hours flowed calmly between homework, play and TV.
The windows of the lower floor were narrow, long and placed too high up for me. On sunny days they allowed in a dense light which filtered through the raw cotton curtains.
The mezzanine floor was inaccessible to me. The bedrooms were there and above all, the ‘nice’ kitchen and living room; never used by the family but always ready for the arrival of an unexpected guest.

Every day, after we had lunched in the mezzanine kitchen, my grandmother went upstairs to run the polisher over the marble floors.
It was the only time I could stay upstairs, careful not to touch or dirt anything.
Here the windows were bigger but the blinds were always pulled down.
The sharp lines of light rested on the encyclopaedia which was never opened, so as not to ruin it, on the many pottery pieces to be dusted and on the sofa where one could not sit. The wrrrrrroooooom of the polisher reverberated everywhere. 30 years later I photographed those rooms, they still looked the same except for some furnishings and knick-knacks.
I did it by positioning the camera at a height of 115 cm.