Born: 1979, Italy
Profession: Engineer
Lives and works: Rome, Italy
LOST AGAIN
I met Vincenzo in Bastogi, on the outskirts of Rome.
I was told that only a few years earlier he had walked above the crowd on his stilts, transforming himself into devils and mythical creatures, carrying audiences with the force of his body and imagination.
When I met him, his world had narrowed to a small apartment filled with fragments of a life that had once been expansive. Dementia was slowly swallowing him, along with his memories. Some days he seemed unreachable, lost in a dense fog, his gaze dimmed in a silent limbo.
On other days, a single photograph was enough to awaken something. His eyes would light up and, for a brief moment, the performer returned, never completely, but enough to reveal what he had been.
The fog never truly disappeared. At times it would thin. Then it would return.
