The need for discovery

I was born at the end of the Sixties in a small town in the Piedmont countryside. Son of farmers and workers, people who broke their backs from dawn to dusk. I grew up in one of those places where the pinnacle of entertainment was the patronal celebration, the dance on the stage or the tug-of-war competition. Not that I didn't like the country, I loved my friends and the country air, but I wanted to see what there was in the world. I was sure of it, I wanted to leave there as soon as possible. For the record it must be said that at the time there was no internet and not even low cost airlines. Traveling was a luxury, not like today a habit to be shared on Instagram.

For example, in my family the most daring until then had been my parents who had risked a four-day trip to Sanremo for their honeymoon. They tenderly described it as an adventure, my grandparents as an unforgivable madness. The attempts I had made to start traveling the world had always failed due to lack of money, fear or simply I didn't believe in it enough. My chance to escape came during my military service. The possibility of enlisting in a section dedicated to military exercises outside the Italian borders was offered. One of the necessary conditions to access it was knowing how to do something useful for the army. I ventured that, if it could be useful, I knew how to take photographs. In fact, until that moment I had never picked up a camera. Luckily for me they decided that a photographer could help. And so I found myself on a plane leaving for Turkey with a camera hanging around my neck. A few months later in Portugal, then in Norway and finally in Denmark. In the meantime, with commitment and dedication, I also learned to photograph well but above all I started traveling which was the thing that really interested me.

Now if you're wondering: "What does a photograph of a leopard have to do with this story?"... you have every reason to. That's when the military service ended, I came home and told my parents that I was going to become a photographer. They weren't particularly enthusiastic also because I didn't want to become a simple photographer, I didn't want to open a shop in the village, I wanted to photograph the world and publish in the most important magazine of the moment, National Geographic. I subscribed to the magazine, thus verifying that most of the photographs in the newspaper were of animals. My first trips as a photographer were safaris in search of the perfect shot. Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana. Over the course of a couple of years I accumulated a decent portfolio of interesting photographs. So I prepared a package and sent it to National Geographic headquarters in New York. The following week I received a phone call. They wanted to buy four photographs of me for a million lire! Among those photographs there was also a close-up of a leopard, an endangered animal that I had photographed during a trip to Siberia. At that moment I understood that I had finally found a real job, but above all that I could support myself by doing what I really liked. I had realized my dream: traveling the world taking photographs and, from that moment on, I never stopped. Sometimes the key to making dreams come true is ignoring the instinct that begs us to give up and give up.


Roberto Cristaudo
NP May 2024